


A Long, Long Getaway

by McSpot



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Not Hockey Player(s), Breaking Up & Making Up, Getting Back Together, M/M, Post-Divorce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 13:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18152645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McSpot/pseuds/McSpot
Summary: Nicke let Sasha pick him up in a bar in Arlington in late 2007.  He let Sasha convince him to move in with him in the summer of 2009, after Nicke finished his sophomore year and the Caps lost to the Penguins in the second round of the playoffs.In the spring of 2011, Nicke graduated with a Bachelor’s in information technology, and Sasha asked Nicke to marry him.  In the summer of 2012, they got married in Sweden, the only one of their three communal countries where it was legal.On June 7th, 2018, the Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup.  On July 9th, Nicke asked Sasha for a divorce.The papers were signed by the end of the summer.





	A Long, Long Getaway

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [A Long, Long Getaway /漫长的逃离](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18426234) by [clairelight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clairelight/pseuds/clairelight)



> All of my thanks to pinkrhinoceros for letting me send her miserable ideas about her favorite team ("but like what if Nicke and Ovi got divorced???"), answering all of my inane questions about the Caps and the D.C. area ("but what's the cell service like on the metro?"), and cheerleading this story from start to finish. Thanks also to everyone on Tumblr for their kind words of encouragement and support.
> 
> Seeing as this is one of my fics, most of it, particularly the ending, was written well after midnight with absolutely zero proofreading. You all know the drill. Read at your own risk.
> 
> Title from Thief by Our Lady Peace. I have no explanation for that one.

Nicke told himself it wasn't petty if he already owned the Red Wings jersey. It was old; his parents had gotten it for him as a birthday gift back in college. A Lidström jersey was a classic no matter what city you lived in.

He may have only been able to get it signed because he knew Sasha, but that was beside the point. The jersey was already his before they'd met each other, and so there was nothing wrong with wearing it to the game when the Red Wings came to Washington. Nicke just liked to represent his countrymen.

Even if he had a seat up against the glass where he knew more than one Caps player might take notice of him.

A few people in Red Wings gear gave him a nod when they came up to the glass to check out warm-ups. Nicke nodded back, feeling mildly like he was lying to them because he didn't really give a shit about Detroit. He just liked to watch the world burn.

And to see the sad puppy eyes that Andre gave him when he caught sight of Nicke's latest team affiliation. He was sure he'd be hearing about that one later.

Christian just made a point of rolling his eyes, tapping the glass in front of Nicke with his stick as he skated past. A few kids huddled near Nicke squealed in excitement, so at least his goal of irritating his friends had multiple positive outcomes.

He'd really just been waiting for those two reactions, so after he'd made sure the boys had gotten a good look at his jersey, Nicke settled back in his seat and pulled out his phone. People all around him were pressing closer to get a look at the players during warm-ups, some carrying signs, hoping to get a puck tossed their way.

Warm-ups had been exciting for Nicke years ago, back when everything about the NHL was covered in that glossy sheen of childhood anticipation, getting to see hockey's greatest players live in person. They'd lost their wonder back when he'd started to know the guys on a personal level; hockey players weren't nearly so thrilling when looking at them just reminded you of the time they'd puked in the back of your car when you picked them up from a bar.

On that note, he made a point of waving to Greenie when he got close to Nicke's part of the ice; Greenie looked surprised to see him, but drew a heart in the air and pointed at Nicke's jersey.

One of the girls near Nicke shrieked in excitement, waving her sign around. Apparently Greenie still had some fans here.

Greenie drifted back towards his own team, and Nicke looked back at his phone. He scrolled through his messages, most of which were Andre and Christian insisting he "better show up tonight or else." Admittedly one of these days he wanted to see what that "or else" might be, but Nicke didn't miss a chance to troll the team. Or, part of the team.

He had an email from his mother, probably all the things she'd been wanting to tell him on the Skype call he'd been putting off, plus scolding him for the delay of that Skype call.

He'd leave reading that one for later.

Another email reminding him that his library books were coming due. Nicke set a reminder in his phone to renew those on their due date and scrolled on.

The crowd around him started jumping and yelling, hands slamming against the glass. He had a feeling he knew what it was about before the boy next to him started bouncing out of his seat, shouting, "Ovi! Ovi, over here, Ovi!"

Nicke sunk lower in his chair, pressing his knees up against the boards. He regretted it a moment later when a body slammed against them on the other side, sending a shockwave up his legs.

Against his will, his traitorous gaze shot upwards.

And of course, just as he expected, there was Sasha, grinning down at him with that toothless smile. He put his gloved hand up against the glass, maybe a wave and maybe just to put it there. The people around Nicke were going crazy, and Nicke's heart was weaving itself into some interesting knots.

He grimaced and looked down at his phone again, blindly scrolling to the next email. Maybe if he stared at this coupon for 15% of his next purchase at Barnes & Noble long enough, his heart would remember that it wasn't supposed to be excited to look at Sasha's dumb smile anymore. And then the real game would start and Nicke could enjoy some professional hockey, cheer for a Red Wings win, and go home.

The noise of the crowd swelled around him again, along with scrabbling sounds against the glass. Knowing Sasha, he was probably tossing something to the fans, because he loved nothing more than pleasing his fans. Fuck, did Nicke know about how far Sasha would go to keep the fans happy-

The pain was quick and hot and stunningly jarring. Nicke blinked a few times, trying to correct his vision. Something had bounced into his lap – a puck, he realized as he squinted down at it. He reached out to touch it, wondering how it had gotten there, when he suddenly realized that the throbbing, slicing pain in his forehead and the horrified gasps of the crowd around him were connected.

"Excuse me, am I bleeding?" he asked the mother of the boy next to him.

At first she frowned in consternation. "No, I don't think so-"

And then her face went white. "Oh. Oh my God, yes."

Nicke nodded politely. "Okay."

He stood up, the puck falling to the ground in front of him. The woman's son, the one who had been so excited to see Sasha, immediately ducked down to pick it up and hold it out to him.

"You can keep it," Nicke said, shaking his head and then thinking better of it as he felt something hot dripping down his forehead. He resisted the urge to wipe at it, only because he didn't want to get blood on his jersey. He really was a fan of Nick Lidström, and it wasn't like he'd be getting another signed jersey.

Nicke moved to try to get to the aisle, struggling through the crush of people who had crowded the glass to get a better view of warm-ups. He put one hand on the glass for balance, and by chance happened to look through it again.

Sasha was right there, blue eyes wide and face pale. He was gesturing wildly at someone through the glass, probably the usher Nicke could hear telling people to move out of the way, all the while cutting quick little glances back at Nicke, seeming to wince every time he did.

"Sir, can you come with me please? We'll get you medical assistance," Nicke could hear the usher saying. He went to nod again and then thought better of it, instead focusing on pressing past the rest of the people already in their seats to get to the aisle. When he finally made it to the end the usher put a hand on his shoulder, face grim, and steered him up the stairs.

Just once, Nicke looked back over his shoulder. Sasha was still there at the glass, staring up at him. His face was a startling array of emotions, shock and pain and guilt. The bitter, vindictive part of Nicke that kept him coming to games representing enemy hockey teams wanted to tell Sasha that he better get those feelings off his face, lest anyone suddenly get any  _ideas_  about why he'd care so much about Nicke.

The usher pressed him firmly onward, and Nicke let himself be guided out of the arena and off to the medical station.

Idly, he wondered if it still counted as spousal abuse for your husband to hit you in the head with a hockey puck after you were divorced.

~~~

Nicke had never expected to be a divorcee at the tender age of thirty-one, but most people never expected to get divorced.

He'd also never expected to be divorced from an NHL superstar, but he'd never expected to marry one either.

Nicke's life had a bad habit of doing things that surprised him. So far it had been more of a curse than a blessing.

He had never expected to meet Sasha, but nobody expected Alexander Ovechkin. Even if you thought you knew what he was like, you would never have a true understanding until you'd had the real Alexander Ovechkin Experience. And God, was Sasha an Experience.

They'd met at a bar in Arlington. Nicke had just turned twenty and was in his first year of undergrad at GW. Sasha had been twenty-two and in his third season with the Caps, scoring goals at a blistering pace and on his way to his first Rocket Richard Trophy.

Nicke had been out with some friends from class, almost all younger than him because American upper secondary school ended sooner than Sweden's. None of them were legal to drink in the US, but that didn't keep them from trying. Nicke had ended up volunteered as the designated driver, even though they were using the metro and that really just meant mopping them all up and pouring them into a train car at the end of the night. He didn't mind not drinking; he was the only one of them who really cared about being caught drinking underage, because he was the only one who had a visa at stake if he got arrested. The part about beginning what would turn out to be an illustrious career of chauffeuring sloppy drunks, he could probably live without.

And so when Nicke met Ovi, he was holding down a booth in the corner of the bar, sipping carefully at the Coke his friends had presented him with a flourish before running off to hit on girls who wanted nothing to do with guys going to school for IT.

He'd seen the Washington Capitals come in. It was hard to miss them, a pack of two dozen-odd huge guys piling into the bar, loud and boisterous and knowing they were hot shit after the win that was still being shown in highlights on the tv over the bar. They'd attracted quite a crowd for themselves and seemed to be reveling in it, guys wanting to be their friends, girls wanting to be something more.

Nicke watched it all as he hunched over his drink in the darkened corner. At first there was a sense of fascination to it; as a hockey fan, it was a little thrilling to see a whole professional hockey team out in public like that. But after a few minutes it lost some of its luster, just another bunch of guys in a bar drinking and laughing and hitting on girls.

The highlights were more interesting, to be honest. It was better to see the team for what they could do on the ice, instead of the fairly unimpressive people they were off of it.

"Seat taken?" someone asked loudly far too close to Nicke's ear. He winced and pulled away from the sound. When he looked up, Alex Ovechkin was leaning heavily against the table with long, shaggy hair and mischief in his eyes.

Nicke had looked at the big, empty corner booth around him, and nodded. "Yes, all taken."

He always insisted it was an intentional brush-off, but when Sasha told the story years later, Nicke was clearly inviting Sasha to join him and stay a while.

Sasha threw back his head and laughed. This had been back when he still had all of his own teeth, but Nicke had been too busy getting distracted by the way his eyes lit up when he was happy to notice his smile. And  _then_  he noticed his smile, and Nicke was smitten.

But that had been okay, because Sasha was smitten too.

Nicke let Sasha pick him up in a bar in Arlington in late 2007. He let Sasha convince him to move in with him in the summer of 2009, after Nicke finished his sophomore year and the Caps lost to the Penguins in the second round of the playoffs.

In the spring of 2011, Nicke graduated with a Bachelor's in information technology, and Sasha asked Nicke to marry him. In the summer of 2012, they got married in Sweden, the only one of their three communal countries where it was legal.

On June 7th, 2018, the Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup. On July 9th, Nicke asked Sasha for a divorce.

The papers were signed by the end of the summer.

~~~

The cut didn't technically need stitches, despite all of the blood. Apparently the thing about head wounds bleeding a lot was true. Nicke wouldn't have known that already, seeing as it was his first one, but Sasha had always told him that, back when Sasha was in the habit of getting head wounds and Nicke was in the habit of worrying over them.

Nicke was more concerned by the considerably large lump that formed on his head, bruising dark despite the ice pack Nicke had been intermittently holding to it.

He'd missed the entirety of the first period by the time the medical personnel deemed him safely triaged. They wanted Nicke to go to urgent care if not the emergency room, warning that he may have a concussion, or that the cut on his forehead might leave a scar if he chose not to have stitches put in. He waved them off; he had no interest in spending the rest of his evening receiving medical treatment. While the steady throbbing in his head was distracting, he thought it was more of a normal headache than a concussion, and he passed all of their little field measures.

"Do you have someone who can make sure you get home safely?" one of the staff members asked.

Nicke grimaced. He'd come here alone, taken the metro to get here. Given the look of anxiety on her face he really doubted that she'd appreciate him saying he was using public transportation by himself when she feared he was concussed.

"Uh...I guess. But I'd have to wait till after the game." Andre or Christian would take him home, surely, if he let them know what had happened. They'd probably seen it, or heard about it by now. Even with the turnover of a Cup win, most of the boys on the team still knew who Nicke was. It would only take one of them to see what had happened for it to get around to the whole team.

He doubted Sasha would be rushing to explain what had happened. It wouldn't exactly paint him in the most flattering light, whatever the hell he'd been trying to do.

Then again, if Sasha was guilty enough, Nicke could see his confessing it to everyone he saw. He was loyal like that; he couldn't stand the idea of doing someone wrong without publicly repenting.

Well. Most of the time.

Sasha would probably offer to drive him home too – fuck, he'd probably offer to leave his car with Nicke and hitchhike home if he had to. He'd been more than a little weird about trying to settle what he "owed" Nicke since the divorce.

But if Nicke was still at the point of accepting rides home from Sasha, he probably wouldn't have been so firm on why they needed a divorce.

So instead he assuaged all the medical staff's fears, saying all the right things and forcing a smile, just for long enough that they let him go. He was back in his seat by the start of the second period.

Nicke wasn't expecting the tug on his sleeve; when he turned, the boy next to him was staring up at him with wide eyes.

"Wow. That's a big band-aid." His eyes never strayed once from the huge chunk of gauze taped to Nicke's forehead. It was probably overkill, but he was just thankful that the medical care was free.

Before Nicke had to conjure up something to say, the boy was thrusting something at him. The puck, he realized after a moment's pause, the one that must have hit him on the head.

"It's yours," the boy said, looking back over his shoulder at his mother. "Mom says Ovi wanted you to have it."

Nicke was already denying it when he saw the flash of silver marker on the puck.

A personalized message.

Great.

Normally he would love nothing more than to pitch it back over the glass at Sasha, but he'd probably get himself tossed from the arena for throwing an extra puck on the ice during a game.

He turned the puck over in his hands, squinting down at the tiny letters. While Nicke would love to claim that it was too cramped to read, over ten years of deciphering Sasha's handwriting meant that he could probably read it even if he was half-blind in the dark.

_Nicke,_

_Cute jersey! Mine is cuter. You should wear it._

The other side of the puck had Sasha's familiar signature and number eight, above which was drawn a large heart.

Nicke could feel his face heating and ears going red. He ducked his head, steadfastly avoiding looking at the boy's mother, who had undoubtedly understood the intent behind the message, even if her son didn't.

On the ice, the Capitals were gaining the offensive zone. Sasha was dangling the puck on the end of his stick, utterly untouchable as he streaked up the ice.

Briefly, Nicke fantasized about flinging the puck in his hand back at Sasha's head, just to let him know how he felt about his "suggestion." At the very least, it would let him return the favor.

"Uh, thanks," he muttered instead. He didn't look away from the ice as he said it, but by the time he glanced over at the kid, he was already enraptured in the game again, bouncing up and down in place in front of the glass.

Nicke missed being that excited to watch a hockey game. He used to love hockey for the sake of hockey, back before he met Sasha.

Now he felt like half of his reason for going to games was out of pure spiteful bitchiness.

Bitchiness, and because Andre and Christian kept giving him tickets and insisting it was "important to have proof that Papa still supported them," as if letting them randomly show up at his place and bum meals off of him multiple times a week wasn't support enough.

At least they didn't try to get him to sit in the family suite anymore. They had only brought it up once or twice, but that had been beyond the pale. There was a difference between hanging out with the boys in private and coming to support them at a game, and sitting himself down with all the team's spouses and acting like nothing had changed. He was sure the women would all accept him back with open arms – God knows he'd been holding down a spot in that suite longer than any of them – but it would just be too strange to keep inserting himself into that setting like the divorce had never happened.

Especially seeing as he probably attended more games now than he ever did when he was married.

Besides, he thought with a grimace, what would happen if Sasha had a new boyfriend or girlfriend up there? That would make things unbearably awkward for them. It would be disrespectful for Nicke to be there.

The boys accommodated him by getting him regular tickets...except the regular tickets always ended up being for glass-front seats, "so we can make sure you actually show up." Which was sweet in theory, but usually just meant Nicke had a front-row seat to watching his ex-husband show off.

At least after tonight, the boys would have tangible proof that if they wanted to invite Nicke to a game, they'd be better off giving him a seat up in the 400s, unless they were really dedicated to Nicke receiving traumatic head wounds.

He startled when the goal siren went off. Sasha had his arms thrown in the air, welcoming Wilson and Kuznetsov as they slammed into him. He doled out head pats to everyone hugging him. Just as he was about to skate towards the bench, Sasha glanced over in Nicke's direction.

For a moment he paused, as if he hadn't expected Nicke to be there. Then the smile on his face got impossibly larger and he pointed his stick in Nicke's direction.

Nicke pointed a particular finger in his direction, mindful that the boy next to him was too busy watching the ice to notice what gestures he was making. But Sasha just threw his head back and laughed, skating to the home bench.

That had been most of their relationship since the divorce.

It made something warm settle in Nicke's stomach, but it was never quite enough to ease the ache in his chest.

~~~

If Nicke'd had his way, he'd have just met Andre in the parking lot. Actually, if Nicke had had his way, he'd have just taken the metro home as originally planned.

But his idiotic sense of personal guilt was overactive, and he didn't want to lie to the girl on the medical staff about having someone take him home, so he texted Andre before the game ended asking for a ride.

He didn't specify why he needed one, but word must have gotten around the locker room about Nicke's maiming, because shortly after the Caps won, he got a text back demanding that Nicke come to the dressing room.

 _I don't have a pass for that_ , he replied, leaning against a wall on the concourse. People were still meandering around, occasional whoops and cheers going up from the crowd as the inebriated faithful remembered that their team had won again. Nicke's head was starting to throb again, the ibuprofen the medical staff had given him starting to wear off, and all he wanted to do was burrow into his bed and not think about coming out for a day or two.

After he took some painkillers, that was.

Andre sent him a series of eye roll emojis.  _Everyone knows who you are! They won't stop you._

Nicke grimaced, trying to focus on his phone's screen and not on how he could feel his heartbeat in the rhythmic pulse of his headache.

_That would look good, the captain's ex-husband inviting himself into a restricted area. Wouldn't look like the crazy ex at all._

_The crazy part is how dumb you're being_ , Andre sent.

"Detroit sucks!" someone screamed helpfully in Nicke's face, shoving him against the wall as they passed.

Okay, guilt was gone now, he was getting the fuck out of here.

_Never mind I'll take the metro. Good game._

He'd almost made it to the doors when his phone started to ring. If Nicke was a little bit smarter, he'd have ignored it.

"Don't you dare go home alone," Christian was growling before Nicke even had a chance to say hello.

Apparently he'd been conferring with Andre.

"What will you do if I do?" Nicke was mildly interested by that; even if Christian was the hockey player between them, Nicke had at least a good thirty pounds or more on him. He liked to think that if there was a physical altercation between them, he'd stand a good chance of winning.

Christian made a broken off noise of frustration. "Papa, come on. Look, if I send someone out to fetch you will you at least come wait in the hall? I promise we'll be quick and one of us will get you home."

And then, as if it had just occurred to him, he asked, "How's your head? Are you okay? It's not still bleeding, is it? Do we need to have a trainer look at it?"

Christ, the last thing that Nicke wanted was to get examined by an NHL trainer. That was the exact opposite of going home and collapsing in bed.

"I'm fine. Drugs are wearing off and my head hurts. Look, I can just wait here-"

"Go back to Detroit, you Swedish fuck!" a man shouted, jostling Nicke away from the exit. His friends cheered in support.

Nicke reminded himself that he used to like this team and ostensibly still did.

"Tina's coming to get you," Christian said with an air of finality that did not fit somebody who was whining on Nicke's couch yesterday trying to get Nicke to do his ironing for him.

Sasha had also been chronically allergic to ironing his own things. Nicke figured it was yet another universal Dumb Hockey Player feature.

Part of him wanted to leave immediately just to be obstinate, but Christian hadn't done anything to deserve that, even if Andre had gotten on his nerves a little bit. So Nicke sighed and walked away from the exit and waited as the crowds thinned out.

It wasn't hard for Tina to find him. She'd been part of the game day staff for the past few years, long enough that she knew exactly who Nicke was. Thankfully, she was also professional enough that if she had any judgment about Nicke being there, it didn't show on her face as she escorted him through the restricted areas towards the dressing room.

Nicke thanked her, and then took up a position holding up the wall outside the dressing room. He wished he'd worn a hat so that he could pull it down to shade his eyes, even though he logically knew it would hurt too much to have it pressed against the bandage on his head right now. But he'd take anything to feel a little less exposed as he stood surrounded by all of these people that he used to know.

Neither Christian nor Andre was amongst the first players to leave the room. No, because Nicke's day had gone from bad to shitty, it was Kuzy first, who took one look at him and exclaimed, "Nicke!"

It was like a clarion call, because there was a loud clattering in the dressing room and the next thing Nicke knew, Sasha was bursting through the doors wearing nothing but compression tights and a towel around his neck.

Nicke swallowed and steadfastly examined the space above the doorway. He may have been divorced, but he'd spent more than ten years being intimately familiar with that body. He wasn't so repressed that he couldn't admit to himself that he had something of a Pavlovian response to seeing Sasha half-undressed and drenched in sweat.

Hopefully the smell would be enough to remind Nicke's dick that they weren't involved with that anymore, if the throbbing in his head wasn't distracting enough.

"Nicke, I'm so sorry." Sasha's eyes were wide and frantic, the way they'd been on the ice when he'd seen Nicke bleeding. "Are you okay? You need doctor? Let me see."

Within seconds he was up in Nicke's space, tutting and fussing and trying to peel the tape holding the gauze to Nicke's forehead.

Nicke slapped his hand away with more than a little relish. "Back off, you smell like something died. I don't need an infection too."

His words didn't have much effect on Sasha, but then, Sasha had always responded to even Nicke's most scathing chirps with a smile. "You're funny," Sasha had told him once years ago after Nicke expounded upon how much he hated Sasha's inability to put laundry in the hamper. "Very, very mean, and I cry lots inside, but very funny."

If he was crying inside right now, he didn't show it. Well, he might cry for real, but only because his eyes kept darting to Nicke's forehead distractedly, like he couldn't keep himself from imagining what lay beneath the bandage. He seemed to have lost all of the cockiness of the Sasha who scored a goal and pointed at Nicke from across the ice, but he probably couldn't see Nicke that clearly from that distance anyway. Sasha's eyesight wasn't that good; Nicke had seen his eye exams, and also argued with him about far too many street signs over the years to attest to that.

"You okay? Did you need stitches? Did you get meds?" It was like Sasha hadn't even heard him, except he kept his fretting hands to himself.

Nicke would have rolled his eyes, except at this point every little movement was making the pain in his head sharper.

"I'll be fine. I just need to get home." Sasha's eyes lit up, and Nicke immediately held up a hand, even as he closed his own eyes and took a deep breath.

"No, you aren't taking me home."

"But Nicke! I should see where you live, it's weird I never been there-"

This was one of the many, many reasons why Nicke had not been anywhere near the Caps dressing room this season. He didn't want to keep rehashing the same conversations he and Sasha kept having whenever they bumped into each other since they separated.

To be fair, if Nicke stopped hanging around with two of Sasha's teammates, this would probably cease to be a problem at all.

"No," Nicke said with forced calm. He touched a hand to his temple in frustration, only to hiss when a fresh bolt of pain reminded him that that was a bad idea.

He was already slapping Sasha's concerned hands away before the pain had even had a chance to subside. " _No_ ," he repeated. "And it's not weird not to know what your ex-husband's apartment looks like. Actually, it's normal. Normal divorced couples don't know what each other's homes look like."

Nicke wasn't prepared for the soft, nearly liquid look in Sasha's eyes. "You know what my home look like."

Well that was a low fucking blow. Of course Nicke knew what it looked like, because it had been  _his fucking house_  up until last July.

"We aren't talking about this again."

And  _there_  was the Sasha that Nicke knew so well, getting a little surly as he frowned and crossed his arms over his still-bare chest.

"You never let us talk first time. You always say, we aren't talking about this, but you never let us talk at all!"

Nicke stared past his shoulder, willing Andre or Christian to appear and get him out of here. Kuzy was still lingering, watching with shameless interest, and Nicke hadn't missed Carlson peering out from a room down the hall. He didn't know how much Sasha or the boys had told the team about the particulars of their divorce, but he didn't really feel like putting it all on display to make sure that nobody had missed anything.

"That's because there's nothing to talk about."

Sasha scoffed and fisted a hand in his own hair, tugging in frustration. "Why you always like this? Of  _course_  there's things to talk about, so many things to talk about, you never say!"

A memory flashed across Nicke's vision, his own fingers sliding through smooth silver strands, Sasha's blue eyes looking up at him-

Nicke pressed against the bandage on his head until he saw stars.

He gritted his teeth. "Sasha," he said quietly, "It's done. It's over. We signed the papers. There isn't anything else."

The door cracked open, but just so fucking Tom Wilson could peek through like Nicke wouldn't see his giant head. He'd bet money that more of the guys were piled up behind the door with him.

Just fucking great. Definitely the last time he let the boys convince him to do something this dumb.

His eyes kept skittering around the hall, taking stock of all the voyeurs watching them, anything to avoid seeing the look of frustration and open hurt laid bare in Sasha's face.

"It's not over for me, Nicke. Never over for me. Papers mean nothing, I didn't marry papers, I marry  _you_. I'm not gonna stop loving you for papers."

This was too much. This was too fucking much, and Sasha was going to do it here, in front of his team, so of course Nicke would look like the asshole. None of them would understand what had really happened, none of them would get why Nicke would divorce Sasha when Sasha felt that way about him - when he felt that way about  _Sasha_.

They didn't divorce for a lack of love. That was why Nicke had put up with it for so long, crossing every boundary he'd sworn to himself since he was a teenager. How could a relationship be bad if they loved each other so much?

And really,  _fuck_  Sasha for doing this to him, when his head was split open because of Sasha and he was penned in alone in what was very clearly Sasha's territory, surrounded by Sasha's friends, months after the divorce was finalized, and Sasha had to dredge it up - for what?

Nothing had changed. If Nicke went back with Sasha, it would all be the same. They'd be in love and Sasha would shower him with adoration and gifts and Nicke would pretend that it was enough to make him feel like he wasn't dying inside the next time he was left home alone while the man he loved celebrated the biggest achievement of his life with everybody else but him.

He couldn't do that to himself again. He'd sworn it, back when he made himself sign the divorce papers with trembling hands while Sasha's tear-filled eyes watched from across the table. All of the love in the world couldn't change the fact that Nicke would have to give up his self-respect to be in a relationship with Sasha again.

Eleven years had been more than enough. Nicke was ready to be unabashedly himself again.

That was the whole reason why he kept sitting in the front row at Caps games wearing enemy jerseys, after all. No way for Sasha to hide him now.

Nicke opened his mouth. He didn't know what he was going to say - probably tell Sasha to go fuck himself, and who cared if he looked cruel in front of Sasha's team, he sure as hell wasn't going to put himself in a position to be around them ever again.

But before he got a chance to speak, the door to the dressing room was shoved open. Both Wilson and Vrana came tumbling forward, clearly having both been leaned against it, but Holtby paid them no mind as he stepped through.

He didn't look around him, but it was clear he was speaking to everyone present when he said in a low voice, "Boys, think we can show some respect and clear the halls?"

Nicke had never before seen so many adult men skitter away so quickly and disappear like guilty mice.

Speaking of guilt, Christian ducked out the door behind Holtby, his head tucked low. Andre was right behind him, face flushed. When his eyes met Nicke's, he too dropped his gaze.

So Nicke probably wasn't wrong about the eavesdropping.

"Sorry, Papa," Christian mumbled. He was speaking Swedish, his one concession to respecting how much Nicke didn't want to be in mixed company right now.

Looking contrite, Andre pulled a bottle of pills from his pocket and rattled them. "I got these from the trainer, he said you probably needed them."

It was over the counter Advil, and Nicke had never been so fast to dry-swallow pills before.

Sasha didn't even look chagrined, skipped right over it to staring at Nicke with wide-eyed hurt, as if Nicke took the pills just to make him feel bad.

It always came back to Sasha in the end. Sasha's career, Sasha's success, Sasha's ego - all things Nicke had to support and protect, lest he upset the delicate ecosystem of the superstar NHL player.

He could still hear Sasha's mother on the phone, explaining to him in stumbling English and what little Russian Nicke understood how much his decision was hurting Sasha,  _you don't want to disrupt his training for next season, do you?_

Nicke's whole adult life had been lived in terms of how every action would improve or impede Sasha's career. And he'd let it happen because he loved Sasha, wanted all of the success in the world for him.

But to support Sasha, he'd had to keep burying himself away, viciously snuffing out any feeling of hurt or discontent because this is what he'd agreed to when he'd signed up to marry a professional hockey player, right?

The divorce had been one of the lowest points of Nicke's life, but it also meant freedom. Nobody could tell him that he had to hide himself for Sasha's sake, not anymore.

He looked Sasha dead in the eyes as he snapped the cap back on the pill bottle, and said nothing.

Nicke was more than happy to let Andre and Christian herd him towards the exit. He was mildly surprised that Sasha didn't try to follow, try to keep arguing his point, but when he chanced a glance back over his shoulder, Holtby was still there, speaking to Sasha in a voice too quiet for Nicke to make out.

Well, whatever. It wasn't like Sasha had anything new to say anyway.

"This isn't happening again," Nicke said quietly as they stepped into the parking garage.

It was telling that neither of the boys asked him what "this" was.

Nicke had been doing a fairly decent job of not having to regularly see his ex-husband. Actually, the only time he ever saw Sasha since the papers were finalized was when the boys convinced Nicke to come to a game, and they typically only saw each other through the glass.

He'd probably cut back on games for a while, or insist the boys finally let him sit in the nosebleeds like he wanted.

Or just buy his own tickets, that was always an option.

He just had to get back that comfortable distance from Sasha again. It shouldn't be nearly this difficult; after all, thousands of hockey fans went every day without running into Alexander Ovechkin. If they could do it, then certainly Nicke could when he was actively trying to avoid him.

Then Sasha would calm down and forget about him, and things could go back to normal.

Right.

As if Nicke even knew what his normal was anymore.

It wasn't until he reached Christian's car that he realized he still had that damn puck in his pocket.

~~~

"You know, credit where credit is due," Christian said as he carefully peeled back the tape holding the gauze to Nicke's forehead. "Ovi was really upset about what happened."

Nicke bit the inside of his lip, focusing on that pain instead of the stinging pull as the bandage was removed. Some of the fresh scab came with it, leaving the wound to start sluggishly bleeding again.

"Is that something we give credit for now? Being sorry that you hit someone in the head with a puck?"

Christian made an unhappy noise; whether it had to do with the state of Nicke's head or his words, Nicke wasn't sure. He prodded the cut carefully, fingers fluttering gently over the lump that had formed on Nicke's forehead. The narrow-eyed look he was giving Nicke was a little too reminiscent of his own mother, especially for someone who still had to be regularly reminded to empty the lint trap when he did the laundry.

"I got ice!" Andre closed the freezer door and squinted down at the Ziploc bag in his hands, his tongue poking out between his teeth as he tried to get the bag to seal. It was clear when he managed it from the look of pure satisfaction on his face.

Then he looked up at Nicke, propped up at his small kitchen table, and he blanched.

" _Papa_."

The word was spoken with the sort of soul-deep heartache that Nicke had never expected to inspire in an adult male hockey player who was less than ten years his junior.

Then again, it had still been surprising when Andre was nineteen and only qualified as an adult if you were looking at his legal ID. It was a little less surprising when Christian came along and jumped right in on the Papa thing too, but only because by that point Andre had started dragging the rest of the team in on it too.

No, the more surprising part had been when Nicke had somehow "won" Andre and Christian in the divorce. "We wanted to live with Papa," Andre had said, eyes wide and beguiling and absolutely full of bullshit.

The boys had never lived with him, before or after the divorce, but it felt like it sometimes when they showed up at all hours of the day and moved around his apartment like they owned the place.

Even now, Andre was digging under Nicke's sink for the bottle of vodka they all pretended he didn't keep for emergencies, and Christian was grabbing up the homemade icepack Andre had abandoned on the counter to press it to Nicke's head.

No matter how gentle his hands, it still made Nicke hiss. It was probably too little too late to be trying to suppress swelling, but it was better than nothing.

Andre plopped himself down at the table, sitting the bottle of vodka on the table none too gently.

"He can't drink that if he's taking painkillers," Christian hissed reproachfully. Andre shrugged and took the cap off.

"Who said it's for him?"

Nicke closed his eyes and slowly eased back in his chair, taking hold of the icepack from Christian. The numbing cold was starting to set in, but he could still feel the rhythmic pulsing of his head. The boys were hissing at each other, and from the scrabbling sounds they were probably starting to wrestle over something. It was almost soothing, in the way that it absolutely wasn't except for the familiarity of it.

God, he didn't want to go into work tomorrow. He was going to look a mess, and that wasn't even addressing how his brain felt like it was trying to leap out of his skull at the earliest opportunity.

"Papa?"

Nicke startled when a hand landed on his arm, eyes snapping open to find the boys watching him with concern. He swallowed thickly, trying to clear his throat with a too-dry mouth. "I'm, uh, I'm fine."

Those little idiots had no right to be exchanging  _meaningful glances_  about him.

"You should probably be going to bed," Andre said. "Here, come on, we'll help you."

On a normal day, Nicke would have protested. Except this wasn't a normal day. His head was killing him, and he'd had a run-in with his ex who kept making an ironically public spectacle of their divorce. It would make sense for the boys to want to take care of him.

They'd always been that way, though, even before the divorce. It was like in deciding that they had to "adopt" Nicke as their surrogate father on the pure basis of a shared nationality and Nicke being affiliated with their captain, they had also determined that it was their sole responsibility to "protect" Nicke from threats, real or unseen.

Sasha used to tell him how entertaining he found it. "All your little Swedish ducklings," he'd cooed the first time Andre had bounced up to Nicke after a game and asked if Nicke saw him score. The look Andre had shot him had been scathing, which was entertaining enough on his baby face, but Sasha had just about lost it when Andre tucked himself up behind Nicke's shoulder and primly announced that Nicke's opinion was far more important than any feedback Sasha could give.

It was patently untrue, and Andre genuinely believed it, and Sasha thought it was the cutest fucking thing he'd ever heard.

It had been years, and Andre still hadn't let Nicke disabuse him of that notion. If anything, he'd only served to drag Christian down the rabbit hole with him.

From a logical standpoint, it didn't make sense that the two of them would still want to hang around Nicke when he was no longer connected to hockey at all, reverted to being a boring office drone in a city of over half a million equally as boring office personnel.

But they had been his steadfast supporters all through the divorce, declaring as soon as they heard the news that they were dedicated members of Team Nicke and that just because he wasn't married to their captain didn't mean he wasn't still their Papa.

Or as Andre had more succinctly put it, "You can't make me go away, I'm emotionally invested now."

And maybe, Nicke was able to grudgingly admit, he was emotionally invested too.

So he let the boys patch him up, placing careful butterfly bandages over the gash on his forehead and then gently covering it in a fresh piece of gauze from Nicke's first aid kit. And he let them chaperone him through his evening routine until they had all but tucked him into bed.

And then he bitched and moaned and still rolled over and made space so they could curl up like puppies next to him, because it was late and Nicke lived on the opposite side of town from the boys now and Nicke had only one bed in his apartment and they all knew that his couch wasn't good for anyone's back.

It wasn't the life he'd ever predicted for himself, pre- or post-divorce, and it certainly wasn't what he'd ever imagined as the definition of having hockey players in his bed. But, Nicke considered privately, he would never be more thankful that he'd somehow won the boys in the divorce.

He wasn't sure what he'd have done without them.

~~~

Nicke's job was a pleasant sort of normal, in that he could rely on it not to ever change. That had been part of the appeal in specializing in data administration: the programs might change and evolve with time, but the core of the job would always be the same, and according to his professors, it was a growing field where he would always be able to find employment.

Sasha had never entirely understood what Nicke did. His eyes used to glaze over every time Nicke used the word "spreadsheet," which was a lot, seeing how much time he spent organizing Excel spreadsheets to send out to the data analyst. Whenever someone asked Sasha what Nicke did, he always used to smile and say, "Nicke does computers for insurance company, very smart work, very boring," and everyone would laugh.

It wasn't necessarily wrong. It took a lot of specialized training to manage some of those programs, and no small amount of ingenuity to write up new code when part of the database inexplicably ceased working. And it also involved a lot of plugging numbers into boxes, and Nicke would openly admit that a lot of days it was mind-numbingly dull.

But it was a predictable sort of dull, the safe kind that made him sure that no matter how bored he was, if he kept doing his job the right way, he'd have a secure paycheck every week.

Job safety had been his primary concern when he entered the field. A lot of his classmates had jumped on board with tech startups looking to get rich quick, but Nicke had no interest in that sort of unpredictable career path.

He got hired by his company straight out of college, and he'd been happily plugging away at their spreadsheets ever since.

Well, as happy as anyone could be with a spreadsheet.

Nicke made good money at his job. He'd always known that, but it hadn't really sunk in until he was suddenly supporting himself with solely his own income for the first time in...really pretty much his whole life. Back when he'd been with Sasha, it hadn't made a huge difference how much money Nicke made, because Sasha always insisted on paying for everything.

"It makes sense," he'd always say, rolling his eyes when Nicke asked if they should split the cost of something – the new couch for the living room, the new dishwasher, the lawn service. "I have too much money, I pay."

Nicke should have argued it more. He should have stuck to his guns and insisted on paying, insisted his name be on some of those bills. It would have saved him a whole lot of headaches later on.

He ended up banking a lot of his paychecks, or investing the money, and that was his only saving grace when Sasha's lawyer reminded them about the prenup.

It hadn't bothered Nicke to sign a prenup. Sasha hadn't cared at all, said he couldn't imagine why they would ever need one when they had no plans on splitting up, but his agent and his lawyer had insisted he ask Nicke to sign one. Nicke didn't hesitate to agree; it was only fair, he'd thought, that if they somehow split up, Sasha was entitled to his own money and assets. It wasn't like Nicke was with him for his money anyway.

He'd never been with Sasha for his money, but he certainly realized just how much money Sasha had been spending for him when the lawyers sat them down and told them who got what in the divorce, following the terms of the prenup.

The terms had made so much sense when Nicke had signed the contract, because he'd been thinking with his head up his ass. Of course Sasha would get to keep all of his money and investments, and whatever had been purchased in his name or with his own funds. Those were his belongings.

It just had never occurred to Nicke that throughout the course of their marriage, and Sasha's natural insistence that he be the one to provide for Nicke and buy everything for him, by the time they divorced pretty much nothing of value was actually in Nicke's name.

Their house? Sasha's name on the deed.

Nicke's car that he'd been driving for five years, that Sasha kept pestering Nicke to let him swap for an upgrade? Purchased by Sasha with Sasha's name on the title, even though it had been bought specifically for Nicke after Nicke's ancient sedan finally threw in the towel (and Sasha had been so excited to see it go).

Their furniture, their belongings, pretty much everything of even mild value had been purchased by Sasha, and his accountant had handily kept records of all of it to pass on to his lawyer.

Nicke had to be glad for his steady job and solid paycheck, because when he got divorced, he abruptly found himself without anything other than his savings, his clothing, and any belongings that could clearly be argued to constitute as gifts, like his watch and his laptop. And suddenly Nicke had been left without a car and in search of affordable housing in the DC metro area: essentially, a miracle.

He had gritted his teeth and stolidly nodded along with all of it. It was still fair; Sasha's money was still his own. But it was still a painful reality check to watch as all of the comforts he'd been living with for over a decade were systematically stripped away.

Back to the real world, was how his brother had put it later.

Nicke's only consolation had been Sasha. Sasha clearly took no pleasure in seeing the prenup enforced. Actually, he pretty obviously hadn't understood exactly what it would entail, because his face grew visibly paler as the lawyer reviewed the terms line by line.

He'd tried to start giving things to Nicke, right there in the midst of their divorce, like it made sense to announce that you wanted your ex to have a million dollars "as a gift."

"The car is Nicke's," Sasha had insisted, "I don't drive it, that's Nicke's car, is gift. I want him to have it."

"Your name is on all of the legal documents," his lawyer had explained calmly.

Sasha balked. "Then I gift right now! Nicke, is your car!"

His poor lawyer just kept reminding him that "that's not the way things work."

Alex Ovechkin wasn't used to hearing things like that.

He'd really freaked when he'd realized about the house, yelping, "Nicke needs house, where will he stay?"

Nicke's lawyer had jumped in then, reminding Sasha that most divorced couples had separate residences post-divorce, and besides, Nicke wouldn't want to pay the property tax on a house of that value anyway.

It had been a kinder way of phrasing it than the flat truth, which was that no matter how decent Nicke's salary was, he'd never be able to afford to maintain a house the size and value of the home he'd had with Sasha.

Sasha, being Sasha, had then immediately offered to buy – not rent,  _buy_  – Nicke an apartment, claiming that it was "only fair" if he kept the house that he should have to pay for a new place for Nicke to live.

Nicke had been the one, that time, to remind Sasha that things didn't work that way.

He wouldn't want it even if things did work that way. It was the same reason he wouldn't take any of Sasha's last minute "gifts": he was divorcing Sasha, and part of divorcing him was refusing to take his pity. Nicke wanted to step away from the glaring luster of Sasha's star, and part of that meant living by and within his own means.

The wounded look that Sasha had given him would have suggested that Nicke had just kicked a puppy in front of him, or announced his love for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

"Nicke, I can take care of you," he'd protested, somehow sounding even more heartbroken.

Nicke grimaced. "That's why we're in this mess, Sasha."

This all sufficed to say, Nicke was lucky that he had a job that paid him a decent amount of money, and that he'd had ten years to squirrel most of that money away instead of needing it to pay normal-people bills, because he certainly needed it now.

The apartment he'd found was fine. Christian insisted that if you looked up the phrase "just fine," you'd find a picture of Nicke's apartment. It wasn't new, but it wasn't too outdated. It had come with some furniture, but only because the old owner had chosen to leave those pieces behind. It had its own washer and dryer, but the shower seemed to have a maximum six minutes of actually hot water. It was near a metro station, but it was also significantly further from Nicke's work than where he had lived with Sasha.

There was also a not-insignificant price increase due to that "prime" location near the metro that took a nice bite out of Nicke's savings every month.

It was serviceable. That was what Nicke always reminded the boys, when they complained that the refrigerator was loud or the parking lot seemed shady or the thermostat didn't seem to quite work right. The apartment wasn't pretty, and it wasn't  _nice_ , but it was clean and it was functional and that was good enough for Nicke, for now. Maybe in the future he'd look to move somewhere further away from the city, but for right now, when he'd still never bought a new car, this was the best option for Nicke to still be able to commute to work.

He was endlessly thankful that he'd never given up his job. When people had asked him why he continued to work when he was married to Alexander Ovechkin, one of the biggest names in hockey history, Nicke had always said it was because he enjoyed having something to fill his time while Sasha was away, and he enjoyed doing something he was good at. Both of those were true.

But he'd also liked the idea of having some tangible proof of his value outside of being Sasha's husband, a clear way to demonstrate that he contributed to society and held a role that had nothing to do with his marriage. Holding down a job of his own was important to him; he wouldn't have gone through so many years of school if it wasn't.

Nicke knew he'd been lucky that Sasha was essentially assured a career with the Caps as soon as he signed. Most NHL spouses had to expect that their own careers could be disrupted at any time by a trade or a new contract, sometimes to the extent that they had to move to a country that wouldn't allow them a work visa. Sometimes trying to maintain a career while being married to a professional athlete just wasn't practical.

And so Nicke knew that he was lucky that Sasha was never in danger of leaving the Capitals, and that therefore Nicke had never had to give up his job for his love life.

He was even luckier for it now that he really, really needed that decently-paying job to keep him afloat. Nicke may have had years of savings to fall back on, but it had been a long time since Nicke had really had to remember what the cost of living was like in DC.

He kept a close enough eye on his budget to be a little nervous that another move would be in order soon, if he wanted to have even the slightest chance of saving money again instead of just treading water.

At the end of the day, even if Nicke had to move even further away from his work and maybe invest in a used car, he still had a good job. The "safe" job had come through for him in the end, being the one solid thing he could fall back on in a difficult and eye-opening divorce that had reminded him what it was like to live a few tax brackets lower than where he'd been the past ten years.

Until that safe job stopped being quite so safe.

It was a few weeks after the puck incident. Nicke's head had healed up well enough that it didn't need to be bandaged anymore, but he still had a lumpy little red scar coming down from his hairline. He was somewhat grateful that he hadn't actually gone out and cut his hair after the divorce like he'd originally planned, because his hair was still long enough that if he brushed it right, nobody would see the scar.

Nicke had been at his desk, one hand wrapped around his second mug of coffee that morning as he squinted at his computer screen, trying to debug their latest update to the database. Apparently it was too much to ever ask for a seamless update.

He hadn't thought anything of it when he got an email alert from his supervisor requesting that Nicke meet him in his office. He didn't even think anything of it when his supervisor started the meeting by saying, "You know the company has had to do some reorganization lately due to budget cuts."

Nicke nodded. It was no secret that the company was downsizing: an entire division had been laid off just last month, their work being absorbed by an adjacent division who was now expected to do twice the work for the same amount of pay. There had been more than a few people talking about jumping ship for a company that didn't put more burden on its employees when it was floundering.

Seeing as Nicke was one of very few people in the company performing his own job, he'd kept his mouth shut. They couldn't really downsize data administration much further than it was already downsized.

Or so he thought.

Reorganization and downsizing, apparently, came hand in hand with outsourcing.

"You understand how it is," his supervisor said, flashing the sort of grim smile that said that Nicke wasn't being given the option to  _not_  understand how it was. "Corporate wants to make cuts in every sector, and part of that is outsourcing most of our IT and data analysis positions overseas. A lot of those things can be handled remotely, and, well, we can't argue that wages are cheaper outside the U.S."

He chuckled a little, like it was hilarious that the company would take advantage of poverty in other countries by paying someone pennies and of course Nicke would agree that it just made sense to fire him.

Nicke blinked at him, canted his head to the side.

"The average hourly wage in Sweden is over eighteen American dollars."

He'd never considered himself a particularly intimidating person, but the boys liked to insist that sometimes Nicke got a look to him like he wouldn't mind watching someone bleed out. Nicke had never understood it himself, but the way his supervisor's face turned white and he started to stutter, Nicke suddenly felt like maybe there was some truth to it.

They offered him a severance package, which Nicke was in no position to refuse. His mind was already whirring, numbers spinning through his head, his monthly expenses and the increasingly frightening number in his savings account. He definitely hadn't updated his resume since he graduated college, but he hadn't had to because he'd only ever worked for one company.

He hadn't thought that he'd need to, because he'd taken the dull, boring,  _safe_  career path. Every modern company needed its data administrators.

Until they decided they'd rather that work be done by someone in India.

 _Fuck_ , and he'd already been worried about not being able to afford his apartment. It was a good thing the boys weren't super attached to it because it didn't look like he'd be able to stay there for much longer. Not unless his job search turned up a miracle.

Nicke didn't much believe in miracles, and it didn't take him very long to determine that a perfectly-located well-paying job in his field was definitely not going to be falling into his lap.

IT jobs should be fairly plentiful, except D.C. was an area that wasn't exactly known for its industry. And nobody was going to match Nicke's old salary that he'd accrued with seniority. Even if he did get hired, he'd be looking at a pay cut.

That didn't even account for half of the jobs being part-time, schools and small business looking for someone to manage their present systems and keep them from imploding but not willing to pay full-time wages and benefits.

And that safe, secure job that Nicke had been promised?

Apparently, nobody needed a data administrator anymore.

For the first time since his divorce, Nicke put his head down in his hands and heaved a shaky sigh.

That move was going to have to happen sooner rather than later, and Nicke's pride was going to have to take a few hard knocks on the way down. But, he reminded himself repeatedly, a job was better than no job.

In one browser Nicke had open realty websites. In the other, he started filling out applications.

~~~

Nicke decided not to tell the boys what had happened right away. The Caps were in the midst of a playoff push, and the last thing anyone needed was the distraction of the captain's ex-husband's fall from grace.

His short-term plan was that he had to move. His apartment was leased by the month, and so he had given himself that much time to get into a new place. Seeing as he was no longer beholden to a metro-area commute, there was nothing keeping him in his current neighborhood. If he wanted anything even mildly affordable, he'd have to get out of the city.

Which of course meant he'd have to give in and buy a car. It wasn't the sort of expense that Nicke was really looking forward to paying, but he would admit there was a certain sort of satisfaction in picking out a used Pontiac Grand Prix that had been kicking around the D.C. area for as long as Nicke had.

One hundred percent of that satisfaction came from imagining the look of horror on Sasha's face if he saw it, but Nicke had to take what little enjoyment he could get right now.

Plus, it was cheap as hell, and that was just about Nicke's speed right about now. He would look into something newer when he was settled with a new long-term job, but for right now he had a car that was functional, and that's all he could ask for.

Choosing where to live took a bit more effort. He didn't want to fully commit to a new place when he still hadn't heard back from any of the companies that he'd sent his resume to. An old classmate from college had given him a lead on a temp position at CP doing systems analysis as they revamped their admissions process over the summer. It certainly wasn't the type of permanency he was looking for, but it was currently his closest bet.

It wouldn't be a bad area to look for rental housing, given the number of university students and temporary residents in the area.

Besides, if he moved out into Maryland, it would put him just a little bit further away from his old home in Virginia. Not that Nicke exactly expected to be tripping over Sasha at Aldi, but every bit of distance helped, another ounce of weight off of his shoulders, another step towards moving on.

Fuck, maybe if he was so dedicated to moving on, he should stop hanging around his ex-husband's coworkers.

He settled on Beltsville. It looked a good on a map, a solid separation from the old life he'd been clinging to for so long. It was also a hell of a lot cheaper than anywhere Nicke had lived for over ten years by sheer nature of being at the very edge of the metro area.

Beltsville was an easy commute to the university, but not so close that it was entirely overrun with college students. It took a bit of research and finagling, but Nicke was able to get himself a flat for rent that would take him through the end of August; the expected tenants had apparently dropped off of the face of the earth after winter break (along with their rent), and the landlord was looking for someone to fill it for the spring and summer until the new crop of students came for the fall semester.

As someone who wasn't looking to put down roots or make any promises, it was the perfect deal for Nicke.

It was a strange feeling, packing up his things from one temporary apartment to take them to the next. In a way it was sort of like being back in college, that constant knowledge that his whole life was presently transitory on the way to a future he hadn't figured out yet.

Nicke wasn't used to not having things planned out. He'd had his classes and housing arranged before he'd moved to America. He'd had his job lined up before he'd finished university. He'd had his wedding vows memorized before they'd even settled on a venue.

To be fair, the divorce had been pretty unplanned. It had been a long time coming, an agitated pot set to simmer over a decade ago and finally boiling over once it had become abundantly clear that his life was never going to change unless he made it change.

That was, Nicke decided with some satisfaction, where his life was now. Maybe it wasn't orderly and safe the way he'd always planned it, but look where safe had gotten him so far.

Maybe it was time to make it up as he went along, make peace with the unknown.

It was with that thought in mind that he let the boys convince him to go to another game.

"Normal seats," Nicke insisted. "None of that glass-front bullshit again, I'm not doing that."

Christian had scoffed and rolled his eyes. "Of course not, we're not idiots."

They both entirely deserved the skeptical look that Nicke gave them, seeing as their idea of "normal seats, not glass-front," was to have Nicke sitting three rows behind the home bench.

"It's not against the glass!" Andre insisted when Nicke saw the ticket. "There's gonna be all those people between you and the glass."

"Plus, like, the back of Coach's head," Christian added helpfully. "It's nothing like front-row seats."

Nicke stared at them. "So you're saying you got me a shitty seat."

The way they both balked and started to apologize was more than worth the effort. The day that Nicke no longer enjoyed giving the boys shit was the day he had to throw in the towel and move back to Sweden.

Which might not be so far off anyways, given the direction his life was heading in.

Nicke hadn't always owned a Canucks hat, but he certainly did by the time he made it to that game. It was high time he properly appreciated their strong history of Swedish success, and what better way to demonstrate that then to represent them at what was possibly his last Caps game for a while.

He made himself scarce during warm-ups, not wanting a repeat of the last time even if he was seated three rows back. Instead he paced the concourse, debating how much money he could really justify spending on concession stand pizza before telling himself that he hadn't even had to pay for his ticket, so he might as well splurge on something.

By the time Nicke ate and wandered some more, the game was about to start, the players already seated on the bench with their backs to the fans behind them. Nicke slipped into his seat just as the lights lowered for the anthem.

He coasted on that wave of smug satisfaction for most of the first period, until a tv commercial break about fifteen minutes in. Christian must have suddenly remembered that Nicke was supposed to be there, because he was jolting around on the bench, craning his neck trying to find Nicke.

Nicke waved pleasantly, just enough to catch his attention. He watched as Christian's face morphed quickly between surprise, excitement, repulsion, and resignation.

An elbow in the side caught Andre's attention, and when Christian pointed, Nicke got to watch the whole reaction play out again.

He tipped his hat to them, grinning broadly. It was a shame they hadn't gotten him tickets to see the Rangers, because even those two couldn't argue with a Team Sweden Lundqvist jersey.

Oh well.

Having gotten his shits and giggles in, and noticing how the fans around him were getting a little too excited about two of the players turning their attention on the crowd, Nicke was getting ready to hunker down and duck his head until play started up again.

But then, because the boys were way too fucking unsubtle, someone must have said something on the bench, and suddenly half of the Washington Capitals were turning around to look at him, including the coaching staff.

And as if moving without his consent, Nicke's gaze landed perfectly on Sasha, in the midst of squirting Gatorade into his mouth.

Even from that distance, he could see Sasha's eyes go wide, blue Gatorade dribbling over his lips.

On a lark, Nicke waved a hand at him too.

As one, the entirety of the Washington Capitals bench turned to watch Sasha choke. A murmur went up around Nicke as the fans watched him plainly coughing and trying to clear his throat, made all the more notable from the way he was trying to wave back to Nicke while doubled over and hacking his lungs out.

It looked a little painful. Nicke winced and settled back into his seat, but that did nothing to stop Sasha from giving him a huge, toothless smile once he caught his breath. He shouted something that Nicke couldn't hear, but the people in the first row must have gotten it because they turned to look at Nicke too.

Fuck, Nicke should have just flipped him off. But now he couldn't do that without flipping off the fans, and that wasn't cool. Feeling his cheeks start to burn, he sunk lower in his seat, hoping Sasha would take the hint and get his head back in the game.

Except he'd known Sasha for long enough that even he knew that was a pipe dream. When Nicke didn't react to him again, Sasha leaned over to one of the trainers and grabbed his arm, pulling him closer and saying something near his ear. Not that Nicke would have been able to hear regardless, but he had a sinking feeling that it had something to do with him.

The ice crew finished sweeping up and play recommenced, and everyone quickly forgot all about Nicke and whatever their captain had been doing. And Nicke was dumb enough to be lulled into a false sense of security.

Everything continued normally through to the third period, without any more hockey players turning around to stare at Nicke. The Caps were up 3-1 by midway through the third, though Nicke was still hopeful for a Swedish comeback. He had just pulled out his phone during another commercial break when someone called out, "Excuse me, sir?"

For a brief moment Nicke told himself that if he didn't react they would turn out to be speaking to someone else, and then he could act like this wasn't the other shoe about to drop. But then they called again, "Sir? Uh, the gentleman in the Canucks cap?"

Considering Nicke was seated in a very devout sea of red jerseys who were all mildly affronted by his team affiliation, there was no way he could try to ignore them now.

Taking a deep breath and praying this would have nothing to do with a certain Russian ex-husband, Nicke shoved his phone in his pocket and looked towards the aisle.

A staff member was there, looking harried as he pressed a hand to his earpiece. "Yes, hi. I just wanted to let you know that you've been randomly selected for a meet and greet with Alex Ovechkin after the game."

Nicke stared.

The people sitting between him and the aisle, who all looked varying shades of scandalized, stared.

The guy walking up and down the rows selling beer and popcorn stared.

Nicke smiled politely, the one that Christian said made him look like he was trying to murder someone with his eyes, and said, "No, thank you."

The staff member, who had not been staring because he was too busy looking at the device in his hand, was staring now. "What? No, sir, I wanted to let you know, you've already won, so we'll have someone come and grab you as soon as the game's done-"

"No, I'm good."

The man was clearly perplexed. It was probably the first time anyone had ever refused a meet and greet with Alexander Ovechkin.

It was also, Nicke would hazard, the first time someone was randomly chosen from the crowd to get to meet the captain, and the first time that said person would be wearing gear for the visiting team.

Because if Nicke were a betting man, he'd put money on this being a promotion that hadn't existed until about an hour ago when Sasha had pointed Nicke out in a crowd and told a member of the arena staff that he wanted to meet the man in the Canucks hat after the game. And of course, nobody would ever refuse  _the_  Alexander Ovechkin.

Nicke had divorced Sasha. He was really, really good at saying no to him.

He could see the staff member puzzling how to respond, seeing as he couldn't just force Nicke to go with him. "Sir, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity-"

"I've met him enough times, thank you. He loses appeal after you've smelled his sweaty equipment." And had to clean up his dirty laundry, and picked up after him, and tried and failed to convince him that he didn't need to hire a maid service if he would just get off his ass and scrub a shower once in a while.

When the staff member appeared at a loss again, Nicke just pointed to his own hat. "Besides. Not a fan."

He made a show of looking at the glaring Caps fans between him and the staff member. "I think any one of these people would be much more excited to meet him."

His seatmates started to perk up and perhaps stopped planning his death, but the staff member was turning red. "The, uh, the prize is non-transferrable."

Nicke smiled blandly. "I was randomly selected. Randomly select someone else."

"That's not how it works-"

"That's exactly how it works," Nicke corrected.

The staff member gaped at him. Nicke faced forward and pulled out his phone again. He didn't see what happened next, because the game restarted a few seconds later, and nobody bothered him after that.

He couldn't help but hear the girl next to him whisper none-too-quietly to her friend, "I'd die if I could touch Alex Ovechkin's sweaty jersey."

Nicke bit his lip and refrained from telling her that the scent would kill her far before the excitement did her in.

Elias Pettersson had a valiant goal with eight seconds left in the game that Nicke would have toasted if he believed in spending ten dollars on a beer. As it was, the Canucks didn't have enough time left to tie, and the Caps won 3-2.

Nicke was already hustling down the aisle and out of the building before the fans had Caps had even left the ice, just to preclude any further "exclusive meet and greet" invitations.

He texted the boys congratulations on their win as he waited for his train. They replied quickly, predictably complaining that he hadn't come down to see them after the game, even though they knew with no uncertain terms that he didn't want to be caught dead down there again.

His train had just arrived when Nicke received a text from a number labeled "Do Not Engage" in his contacts.

_You didn't come see me after the game (((((((_

He wouldn't have needed the contact name or the eyeless frowny faces to figure out who that was.

The smart choice would be to heed the warning of the contact name and refuse to respond. Actually the truly smart choice would have been to lose Sasha's number as soon as the divorce was finalized and they had no reason to communicate anymore.

But Nicke wasn't immune to sentiment, and it had felt so severe to actually remove Sasha from his phone, even if he couldn't fathom up the emergency circumstances under which they'd need to communicate again. Andre was his emergency contact in the US, and he was under strict instructions to call Nicke's parents in Sweden immediately if something catastrophic had happened. Nicke had no reason to contact Sasha at all anymore.

He'd told himself that countless times, and yet the most he could do was get himself to remove Sasha's name from his contacts in a pointless hope that it would dissuade him from responding when Sasha tried to talk to him. To be fair, Sasha had done a commendable job of heeding Nicke's warnings that he would not only block him but get a new phone number if Sasha wouldn't stop texting him after the divorce. Aside from one late night phone call that Nicke had slept through (and that hadn't resulted in a voicemail) back in October, Sasha had only texted him twice. Once was asking if Nicke knew where the circuit breaker was (which was honestly more concerning that Sasha had lived in that house for years and  _didn't_ know), and the other was asking if Nicke wanted any of the Christmas decorations (an easy no, because Nicke had no place for them and decorating wasn't any fun if he was only doing it for himself).

Otherwise Sasha had for the most part respected Nicke's wishes for them to no longer speak to each other.

So he didn't really understand what had changed now, but he even less understood why he'd actually responded,  _Are you suggesting I wasn't randomly selected?_

Sasha's response was immediate. Nicke could picture him in the dressing room, half-stripped out of his gear and hunched distractedly over his phone.

He quickly forced himself to stop imagining it.

_Nicke! Were you mean to staff? Tina says you scare Jonah._

_Jonah is a dumb name. But I was very polite._

_Mean Lars is always polite_. Sasha attached a devil emoji.

Nicke snorted and shook his head as he boarded the train. He thought about his response for a moment as he settled into a seat.

_I wasn't mean. I was factual. I told him I'd already met you before. And that they were welcome to randomly select somebody else._

A dismayed emoji.  _Rude, Nicke! You can't turn down special prize!_

_But I did._

_And you make Jonah sad._

_Jonah was welcome to pick somebody else, but for some reason I don't think it was a real promotion._

He didn't get a response for the rest of the trip home, long enough that he figured maybe Sasha had gotten too embarrassed to be called out. It seemed far-fetched, seeing as Sasha was the most shameless person Nicke knew, but it was always possible.

The trip to his apartment was far less eventful than the last time he left a Caps game, namely because he wasn't actively wounded this time. When he came through the door, Nicke looked around his apartment and sighed.

He needed to begin packing soon. It wouldn't take that long. Half of his things were still packed in boxes from when he moved in. But it was still a pain, and something to worry about tomorrow.

For now, Nicke went through his evening routine on autopilot. It was late by the time he'd settled himself in bed and turned out the light. That also happened to be when Sasha texted him back, just as he was plugging his phone in and setting his alarm clock for the next morning.

 _Maybe Jonah just pick the prettiest man he see,_  Sasha said.

Nicke stared at his phone. It had been easy, so far, to fall back into the light banter that had characterized most of their conversations. Talking to Sasha had always been easy, but that was because it was easy for anybody to talk to Sasha. He was funny and charismatic and engaging. Sasha could make anyone feel like they were his best friend after talking to him for three minutes.

He drew people into his orbit, had that gravitational pull that made them want to stay. It had been enough for Nicke for so long, just to be near Sasha and have some of that warmth and light radiate towards him as well.

But at the end of the day, all of Sasha's humor and charm boiled down to words. The same words that he gave to everyone, diamonds shed like water droplets, as easy as breathing. It was so easy to be drawn into the glamour and glow of Sasha's words, and so much harder to stand back and see the forest for the trees.

Sasha was a flirt, and Sasha was smooth, and the worst of it all was that Sasha was genuine.

But Sasha hadn't changed. Sasha was still Alexander Ovechkin, a living legend before the age of thirty-five, the man who finally brought the Stanley Cup to Washington, the champion of Russia whether or not he had that Olympic gold medal.

And Nicke was still Lars Nicklas Bäckström, his no-name Swedish ex-husband who worked in IT. The one that Sasha kept such a secret that he'd never once taken Nicke home to Russia in the eleven years they were together, even when he played for Moscow during the lockout. The one that he secretly married in Sweden and divorced even more quietly after he won the Stanley Cup. If you were to look at the celebrations when the Caps won the Stanley Cup, you would have never even guessed that Sasha was married. You wouldn't have guessed that Nicke was even a person who he knew, because for the most part, Nicke wasn't there.

For all of Sasha's words, none of that had changed. And it never would.

 _This doesn't change anything,_  Nicke texted, because it needed to be said.  _You know that._

This time when Sasha didn't respond right away, Nicke was almost sure it was to avoid confrontation. But just as Nicke was about to put his phone down and roll over, the screen lit with a new message.

_I know. But I miss talking to you. You're still my best friend._

A thousand replies flew through Nicke's head, bald-faced lies and too-uncomfortable truths.

He settled for a plain,  _I know_.

And then he put his phone on silent and rolled over, hiking his blankets up to his chin and staring at the plain wall of his sparse apartment, reminding himself of exactly why this couldn't change anything.

Sasha may not have changed, but Nicke had. Nicke couldn't be what Sasha needed him to be anymore. Nicke didn't  _want_  to be that person anymore. He didn't want to sit in the back, edge out of photos, keep his head down and act like he didn't know his own husband because God forbid someone start to ask who this blond man was that hung around Ovechkin so much. He didn't want to have to hide his wedding ring in public and never be able to hold hands with his husband or kiss him or even be seen having dinner together unless it could be sufficiently passed off as two dudes being bros.

He didn't want to put his life on hold and hide himself away and mold himself into a quiet slip of a person who was only allowed to exist in the shadows where the bright lights and public fame of Alexander Ovechkin couldn't reach.

Nicke didn't want to live the rest of his life as the shameful secret that Alex Ovechkin kept tucked away at home, the living evidence of his greatest sin.

Alexander Mikhailovich Ovechkin, Washington's hero and Russia's golden son, was not gay.

Sasha, the man with bright eyes and a goofy smile who swept Nicke into his arms on a rainy day in Gävle and asked Nicke to marry him, was.

And as the years went on, those dark places where Nicke and Sasha were allowed to exist together as Nicke-and-Sasha grew smaller, and darker, and lonelier. Because Sasha was busy being Alexander Ovechkin, and Nicke was left behind, a toy pulled out when Sasha had the time to remember he had a husband.

Nicke and Sasha had loved each other passionately, ardently, desperately, but even desperation wasn't enough when your whole life was centered on protecting and supporting the career of a man who would never publicly acknowledge that he was your husband.

Sometimes, love just wasn't enough. That hadn't changed.

Nicke imagined it never would.

~~~

He had never planned to divorce Sasha. He'd never planned to marry Sasha. Back in that bar in Arlington, he hadn't planned to give Sasha the time of day.

For one, Nicklas Bäckström was no man's conquest or flavor of the day. He wasn't a prize to be won or a challenge to complete. He didn't go home with someone unless he damn well felt like it, and absolutely no part of him was impressed by a hockey player trying to pick him up, even if that hockey player was Washington's new superstar.

For another, Nicke had also sworn to himself back when he'd first realized that he was definitely, unequivocally gay, that he was never, ever going to get into a relationship with a closet case. While he fully respected that everyone came out at their own pace and that some people, for any mixture of reasons, were not comfortable being out, whether to their family or coworkers or the public, he also respected himself enough to know that a relationship with someone who was in the closet could only ever lead to heartbreak.

In his defense, he hadn't thought it was even possible for two men to get married if one of them was still in the closet, so he wasn't exactly on guard for it.

At first, he'd told himself that it was okay because Nicke was a private guy too. He didn't want his relationship splashed across magazine covers and internet articles. He didn't have any interest in giving interviews or being one half of the first gay relationship in major league sports. It had made perfect sense to Nicke that he and Sasha would keep their relationship quiet, private. Nicke had imagined that it's what he would want if he were a professional athlete, even if he was straight.

Discretion wasn't secrecy.

And then, when it started to chafe a little that Sasha wouldn't even let Nicke kiss him goodnight when Sasha dropped him off after a date unless they were firmly behind locked doors, Nicke told himself that it didn't really count as dating a closeted guy if Sasha was out to his friends and family. After all, he'd taken Nicke to a team party, introduced Nicke to his parents when they came to town for Orthodox Christmas. Closeted guys didn't let you meet their social circle.

Closeted guys definitely never asked you to marry them.

It didn't feel like their marriage was a secret. It was legal in Sweden, and both of their families were there, along with Sasha's teammates. They had the type of wedding that Nicke had always imagined for himself, and for one day he didn't have to worry at all about standing too close to Sasha or kissing him or looking at him for too long. Their wedding photos were incredibly normal, and Nicke had secretly thrilled a little every time he saw them, a tangible proof that they were married.

They had the rings, too, of course. When he went to work, Nicke could wear his ring. He could wear his ring to the grocery store, and to run errands. But Sasha's agent recommended that he not wear it anywhere that he might be seen with Sasha, "on the off-chance that someone might ask about it."

As if the media would automatically assume that any man standing near Alexander Ovechkin wearing a wedding ring was his husband.

But Sasha was nervous about it, and so Nicke had complied. He got used to holding it in his pocket, rubbing it between his fingers when he couldn't touch it on his hand.

It wasn't so bad. Sasha was careful about his ring as well, but he always had it with him. He wore it on a chain around his neck, passed it off as a family heirloom. Nobody ever questioned it, because Sasha already wore a chain anyway. The ring just looked like another good luck charm.

Technically, Nicke's husband was still wearing his wedding ring in public. It wasn't so bad.

If Sasha were running around D.C. hooking up with girls, it would have been a different situation. For all of his reputations, Sasha was loyal to a fault. Nicke had never doubted that Sasha was faithful to him, and he didn't think Sasha would consider trying to protect his image with a public relationship with a woman even if his agent did suggest it to him.

At the very least, if it had been asked of him, he'd never done it, and that had to be worth something. You couldn't be closeted if you weren't pretending that you had relationships with women just to appear straight.

Nicke had all of these little stories that he told himself over the years. He couldn't go with Sasha to that team event even though everyone else's spouses were going to be there because nobody brought their friends to something like that, and the media would question them immediately. Besides, Nicke didn't like having his photo taken anyway, right? That's why he wasn't in any of Sasha's social media photos, why he had to step out of frame when people took pictures at parties. Nicke was pretty good with a camera, it was better if he took the photos.

It was a small price to pay if Nicke couldn't go somewhere romantic with Sasha for his birthday because it would be weird if they were seen at a table for two in an expensive restaurant, if that meant supporting Sasha's career. What was the background on his phone or the photo on his desk at work worth if it would risk Sasha's success?

Nicke got sunburned too easily anyway, so it was a good thing he didn't go on that vacation over the bye week with Sasha and some of his teammates and their wives. He didn't like the beach anyways, right? And maybe he would have liked to have gone to Russia, to have seen where Sasha grew up, visit his parents in their own home, let Sasha show him around his beloved Moskva. But Nicke knew the sociopolitical climate in Russia just as well as anyone, and he knew how dangerous it could be if anyone in Russia expected that Alexander Ovechkin was gay. They couldn't afford to have questions, even if Nicke was just passed off as a friend from D.C.

After all, why would Sasha have a friend from outside of hockey in D.C.? It just didn't make sense.

That was what Nicke told himself over and over when Sasha kissed him and told him he was going to play for Dynamo during the lockout. It made sense for Nicke to stay home and not miss time from work, especially when Sasha would be travelling around the KHL with the team. Besides, the lockout wouldn't go on forever; Sasha wouldn't be gone that long. Even if he had only just gotten back from spending time over the summer in Russia.

He reminded himself of that when the lockout continued through October and November and December. Without Sasha's hockey schedule to adhere to, Nicke was able to make a trip home to Sweden to visit his family for Christmas, so it wasn't like it was all bad.

And maybe it was difficult sometimes, the nights spent alone because Sasha had gone off without him again. Maybe it bothered Nicke sometimes when he had to get up and leave the dinner table at a party because someone wanted a picture to post for social media and they didn't want anyone to question who Nicke was. Maybe it was a little frustrating that Nicke couldn't shop for furniture with his husband unless they had the buffer of his teammates there and pretended that one of them was assisting the other in a purchase instead of buying something for their home together.

But those were all inconveniences that Nicke would choose time and again if it meant protecting Sasha's career. And that was why he kept them to himself for so long: he had agreed to marry Sasha recognizing that these were the terms of engagement, and so it would be rather backhanded of him to then throw them in Sasha's face and try to say that Nicke was more important than his success. Sasha had a life outside of Nicke, a life and a dream that was bigger than anything that Nicke would ever amount to. Nicke couldn't unload his issues on Sasha, not when he knew that Sasha would take it so dearly to heart the way he did anything that affected Nicke.

It was in Sasha's best interest that Nicke kept his mouth shut and sucked it up. Marriage was about sacrifice, was it not?

Nicke told himself all of those sweet lies for years and years, crammed himself into neat boxes and shut down any voice in his head that told him that this wasn't right, because he loved Sasha and Sasha loved him, and you weathered any storm for the people you loved.

God, he'd been such a fucking idiot. But there was a reason that people also said that love could make you blind.

It had taken the Capitals winning the Stanley Cup for the scales to finally fall from Nicke's eyes.

Nicke had never been with Sasha for his celebrity. He hadn't married Sasha with his own fantasies of that fame rubbing off on him, of the glamour of being connected to a professional hockey player. Quite honestly it wouldn't have even made sense, given that he and Sasha had always kept their relationship so quiet.

So Nicke had never wanted the Caps to win the Stanley Cup to say that he was connected to a Stanley Cup-winning athlete. He wanted them to win because Sasha's dreams were Nicke's dreams, and what Sasha wanted more than anything in the world was to bring the Stanley Cup to Washington, D.C.

Nicke just wanted to see Sasha smile. Civilizations were built and wars were waged for that dumb, toothless smile.

The Caps had been to the playoffs plenty of times throughout their relationship. Nicke had a fairly simple routine for them by now. For one, he would only go to home games, even in the playoffs. He could be passed off easily enough as a friend then, because plenty of guys had friends in the family suite during the playoffs. Actually, he could get away with going to far more games than he usually did during the playoffs for that exact reason; he had to space his games out during the regular season, because it would draw suspicion if Nicke came too often when everyone else just had their wives and girlfriends there.

Another part of Nicke's routine was that he never, ever, went down to the dressing room after playoff games. During the regular season he could get away with it, but there were too many cameras around in the postseason.

And of course, he could never drive to the arena with Sasha or leave with him, but that was a given.

The only difference about the last playoffs had been that the Capitals made it to the Stanley Cup Finals. Then the routine had started to fall apart.

Nicke didn't travel to the first two games in Vegas. That was fine. Most of the players' families didn't. They all knew the Cup wouldn't be won in those games anyways.

But by Game Five, the Caps were up 3-1 in the series, and the Stanley Cup would be in the building in Vegas. "I want you there," Sasha had said, kissing Nicke firmly as if to seal the deal. "I want you there when I win the Cup, my two favorite things together."

Nicke had let himself be wrapped up in those words, the giddy promise of Sasha actually wanting to take him somewhere, and he agreed.

He would never regret going to Vegas, because that was where the Capitals won the Stanley Cup.

Words couldn't describe how it felt for Nicke to watch Sasha finally,  _finally_  win the Cup, to see the love of his life finally achieve his dreams after so many false starts and broken hearts.

Watching Sasha raise the Cup was more than worth all of the years of silent pain, and Nicke got to be there to see it.

He'd almost forgotten himself, when everyone's families were ushered down to the ice to congratulate their loved ones. It had been Sasha's mother who had stopped Nicke as they made it down the tunnel, a gentle hand on his chest.

"You wait, Kolya,  _da_?" she said, her effervescent smile dimming slightly.

For a moment, Nicke hadn't realized what she meant, wondered if the language barrier was wreaking havoc again. Then she raised her eyebrows at him meaningfully and it sunk in.

"Oh. Of course."

Just because Sasha won the Stanley Cup didn't mean that he was ready to have his secret husband come out on the ice to congratulate him. Nicke slipped back down the hall, letting everyone pass by him as they went out to hug their respective player, parents and children and wives and girlfriends and siblings all in a tearful crush, overwhelmed with joy. They had all been on that journey together, supporting someone who had dreamt their whole life of holding the Stanley Cup. Now they could share in that dream with them.

Nicke tucked himself in the shadows of that hall and watched as Sasha held the Cup, as his parents hugged him, surrounded by cameras and flashing lights. No, it would have been far too conspicuous for Nicke to be there, he decided. This was for the best.

He didn't actually end up seeing Sasha for a few days. What with the Caps partying and celebrating and the constant media coverage, not to mention Nicke having to get back home for work, it just didn't pan out.

Sasha called him, of course. He was drunk and emotionally weepy and he told Nicke how much he loved him, over and over, how Nicke was his rock and his best friend and the love of his life and how he never would have made it anywhere without Nicke by his side, backing him up.

"You make the assist, Nicke," he'd cried, more than a few sheets to the wind. Nicke could practically smell the liquor through the screen of his laptop. "I score goals, but you the assist, every time. We win together."

He'd started crying harder, but it was endearing because it was Sasha. Besides, when he'd dried out a little the next morning, though not enough for the hangover to set in, they had some of the best video sex of their lives (and Nicke and Sasha had a very long history of every form of phone and video sex so far invented).

And of course, Sasha made good on all of his promises in person when they finally saw each other again, telling Nicke that just because they couldn't have a Stanley Cup baby like everyone else didn't mean that they couldn't have the same amount of victory sex.

Sasha had asked Nicke to fuck him that night, and some part of Nicke's dumb monkey brain insisted that an NHL superstar couldn't be that closeted if he would let his gay husband fuck him after he won the Stanley Cup.

In retrospect, Nicke saw it as one of his brain's last gasping attempts to justify the hell he'd been putting himself through for years, because his sense of reality was fast dissolving around him and it was all starting to look like one long exercise in masochism.

Things didn't fall apart at the victory parade. They probably should have; evidently that's when they fell apart for everyone else. But Nicke was able to justify the parade to himself, one last time.

He'd been there to see some of the disillusionment settle in amongst Sasha's teammates, even if he didn't realize it at the time.

Of course, it had started with his boys. Christian and Andre were always Nicke's boys, had been since they realized that their captain married a Swede. Everyone acted like it made so much sense, Nicke being their Papa naturally meaning that Sasha was Mama.

"It fits," Beags had said once with a sly grin, "Ovi's way too maternal to be the dad anyway."

Sasha had worn that like a badge of pride.

And so when it came to deciding who would ride what bus along the parade route, Andre had quickly announced, "I want to ride with Papa." It didn't even have to be verbalized that Christian wanted the same thing.

They had announced this at a private celebration at someone's house, plopping their asses on the couch on either side of Nicke as if that settled everything.

Nicke had blinked in surprise, cast a glance over at Sasha, but Sasha wasn't paying attention, talking to Kuzy and his wife.

"Uh. I'm not going."

Christian had made a show of rolling his eyes, throwing his arm around Nicke's shoulders and giving him a little shake. "Papa," he whined, laying his head on Nicke's shoulder. He smelled strongly of tequila. "Of course you're going, everyone's going."

"We'll get lost without our Papa," Andre agreed, leaning heavily against Nicke's other side.

"You'll be on buses following a bus route."

"And you can hold our hands so we don't fall off," Andre said in mumbled Swedish. He closed his eyes and nuzzled Nicke's shoulder, clearly deciding this was where he planned to sleep.

"I'm not going," Nicke said again. He said it in Swedish this time, thinking maybe it would sink into their alcohol-soaked brains.

Andre snorted as if to brush him off and didn't open his eyes, but Christian peeked up at him through one eye. "You're not serious, right?"

Nicke hated how small he sounded, especially because he knew right then that what he was about to say would upset them.

"I'm serious. I'm not going."

He was still surprised by the twin grips on his arms, as if the boys thought he was going to up and leave just because he said he wasn't going to a parade.

"What do you mean you're not going?" Christian asked, eyes wide with something Nicke didn't want to think about.

"I'm not a parade person," Nicke mumbled. He looked off to the side at where Vrana and Bowey were playing some weird version of Jenga on top of Wilson.

Andre made an offended noise and prodded him in the ribs. "So? Neither is Holts, and he's going. Everyone's going. My  _mom_  is going. Of course you have to go, you're the captain's husband."

Nicke bit his lip, kept his eyes averted. There was no nice way to point out that it would be a little weird for the captain's secret husband that nobody knew about to suddenly appear at a victory parade.

"You know I don't do these sorts of things," he said instead.

But the boys had smelled blood in the water now, both sitting upright. He could feel their eyes boring into him from either side.

"You don't do media stuff?" Christian asked carefully. "Or you don't do stuff as the captain's husband?"

Nicke shot him a look. "Everyone knows Alexander Ovechkin doesn't have a husband."

He'd meant it to be sarcastic and droll, had been ready to roll his eyes with it, except both of the boys flinched like they'd been struck. Andre's hand landed on Nicke's arm, patting around like he couldn't quite control himself to grab onto Nicke's hand on the first try, but squeezing tight once he had it.

"Papa," Andre began in a low voice, as if anyone around them understood Swedish. "Are you not... _allowed_  to be seen with Ovi? Like..."

He trailed off, looking conflicted and uncomfortable and maybe scared. It was incredibly wrong on a kid like Andre, especially one who had been so happy the past few days.

"We've always kept things quiet," Nicke said, choosing his words carefully. "The media doesn't know. We try to keep it that way." And then, as if he felt the need to justify it further, "You know how Russia is about these things."

But the boys didn't relax the way he'd expected them to, or get bored and change subjects. Andre was still squeezing the life out of his hand, and Christian had a grip on Nicke's shoulder.

"He keeps you a secret?" Christian hissed. "But what about, like, when you go out on dates?"

Nicke shrugged. "We have to be careful about how it looks."

"And what about when you're on vacation? Or, or like when you took photos with the Cup?"

Here Nicke grimaced. "I didn't take photos with the Cup."

He was looking at Christian, but he could feel Andre's frown, hear it in his words. "Of course you did, there were cameras everywh-"

Nicke could pinpoint the exact moment when the boys put it together.

"You didn't come out on the ice?" Andre asked in a small, quiet voice, sounding every bit the boy that Nicke always called him. "When we won?"

Nicke shrugged. "It's better for Sasha that I didn't. It's the way things have always been."

He was trying to placate them, but that just seemed to make it worse.

"And now he won't have you in the parade either?" Christian asked. "So what, he won't let you celebrate with him at all? You're his husband! Of course you should be there!"

"It's not that simple-"

"It's exactly that simple! I don't care where he's from, you don't love someone enough to marry them and then treat them like a leper in public!"

Nicke closed his eyes and breathed in deeply through his nose, telling himself that those words didn't sting as sharply as they did.

"He doesn't treat me like a leper-"

Andre tugged on his hand. "Is this why you never let us post pictures with you in them?"

"Or why you're never in pictures at all?" Christian added. He'd already pulled out his phone and pulled up Sasha's instagram account. "Fuck, it's like you don't even exist!"

Nicke bit his lip hard enough that he tasted blood, and then he bit it a little harder for good measure. The words kept bouncing around his head, even as Christian's expression slipped into regret.

"Fuck, Nicke, that's not what I meant."

"I know," Nicke said. He patted Christian's knee, squeezed Andre's hand again, and extricated himself from their grasp. "I'm going to go get a drink."

He did get that drink eventually, but first he stood in the bathroom, staring at himself in the mirror, trying to banish those echoing words from his mind.

 _It's like you don't even exist_.

Nicke could see himself there in the mirror, tangible, real. He knew he existed. It was a dumb thing to even question it.

And so why did this man in the mirror feel so false?

Those words clamored around in his head for weeks, through the parade and the revelry and when everything calmed down again. Nicke couldn't stop himself from pausing at least once a day and reminding himself that of course he was a real person; what else could he possibly be?

But then why wouldn't the words go away?

Why did they keep coming back at all hours of the day, when he woke up and when he went to work and when he made love to his husband and when he slept?

_It's like you don't even exist._

_Do I exist?_

_Who even am I?_

It took Nicke a while, longer than he'd have liked, to realize that there was a time when those words would never have occurred to him because there had been a time, most of his life, really, when he'd been so utterly sure of himself. The Lars Nicklas Bäckström who met Sasha in a bar never would have worried about those sorts of things, but that same man hadn't lived Nicke's life.

Nicke had been with Sasha for eleven years. He knew Sasha not just like the back of his hand but like his own heart. He knew Sasha's likes, his dislikes, he knew his routines, his flaws, his foibles. He knew how Sasha would react to news, good or bad; he knew how Sasha behaved when he was grumpy or tired or frustrated or excited. He knew the ins and outs of Sasha's life, and the roles that he played in it.

He knew what he had to do to facilitate Sasha's life, make it that little bit easier, whether that meant helping him pack for trips or prepping meals or being there to support him after a hard loss. Whether it meant ducking out of photos or deciding to stay in on their anniversary or keeping his displeasure to himself when Sasha left for Russia without him once again.

With a start Nicke realized exactly who he was: a construct created to make Sasha's life easier. Every little aspect of who Nicke was boiled down to the question,  _how will this affect Sasha? How will this affect his career?_  If it wasn't good for Sasha, Nicke didn't do it. If it wasn't good for Sasha, Nicke didn't say it.

Nicke was like a tiny little house elf who existed to take care of Sasha's needs. It wasn't even at the expense of his own, because Nicke wasn't sure what his needs were anymore. He hadn't thought about it in so long. If it wasn't good for Sasha, he dismissed it. He dismissed everything, threw it out of his head or tamped it down because a good husband made sacrifices.

He hadn't realized just how much he'd been sacrificing himself.

Nicke wasn't like this. The real Nicke, the one he knew existed, he wasn't like this. He was opinionated and sarcastic and bitchy, and nobody pushed him around. He took care of the ones he loved, but he told them when things were wrong. He stood up for himself.

There was a reason that Lars Nicklas Bäckström had sworn he was never going to be in a relationship with someone who was closeted.

He'd always thought that he'd have more self-respect than that.

After all, the world's general population was the biggest possible closet to hide in.

Nicke didn't know what to do with himself. He didn't know what to do with any of it. He didn't feel like he could blame Sasha – after all, he'd agreed to all of this, hadn't he? This was what they had agreed on, together. He hadn't ever said no, or complained, or told Sasha something was wrong. He knew that Sasha would hate to know he was feeling this way.

But that's why he'd kept quiet about everything for so long, wasn't it? He didn't want to upset Sasha, can't possibly consider saying something that will make Sasha feel bad, because that will throw him off his game, and then that will hurt his chances at winning the Cup, and what kind of husband did that and called himself supportive?

Well, the Cup had been won. The last summit had been crested, the dragon had been slain. The off-season had just begun; there was no reason to worry about damaging Sasha's chances of success when he literally couldn't be any more successful than he was right now.

And so Nicke held his ground when Sasha began to pack to go to Russia.

"I'm going with you," he said firmly, flatly.  _Mean Lars_ , Sasha called that expression.

He was perhaps a little too fond of it, because at first he just laughed. "I miss you too, Nicke, but it won't be long."

It was like dismissing a child, Nicke realized. The thought grated over his mind like sandpaper, harsh and irritating and wearing away what little patience he had. It got his back up, made his knuckles tighten over his crossed arms, and it felt  _good_. Nicke was frustrated with his husband and he was enjoying letting himself have that emotion.

"I'm serious. I want to go with you. We've been together for nearly eleven years, married for six, and I've never been to Russia. I want to see your home with you. I want to be there when you bring the Cup home."

He deserved that much. He'd been denied the celebration on the ice, the parade. Fine, Nicke could live without any manner of public celebration, but this, Sasha's personal day with the Cup, the time to celebrate with his friends and family and everyone he held dear in his hometown, he couldn't possibly deny Nicke that.

Sasha looked conflicted, pained, and part of Nicke told him to drop it – and that thought made the rest of him want to cling that much tighter.

"Nicke," Sasha sighed, and Nicke could tell right there where this conversation was going to go. Sasha was going to be sad, maybe even heartbroken and distraught. Maybe he would cry a little, press kisses to Nicke's cheeks and hold him tight and tell him he loved him.

But Sasha was going to say no. He was going to say no, and he was going to keep saying no, because nobody ever told  _him_  no. Sasha always got his way in the end.

Nicke knew it was coming, and it stung like nails across his heart when Sasha said, "Nicke, babe, you know I want you there, but it's too dangerous."

Nicke dug his nails into his crossed arms, reminded himself why he was doing this. Raising his chin, he said, "They don't even have to know we're married. Fine, I get that, I know what the laws are like. I'm not asking for that. I'm asking that I get to be there with the rest of your family on your day with the Cup. I know your family's throwing a big party; you'll have plenty of friends there. I could just be another one of them. That's all I'm asking. I just want to be there."

He didn't move a muscle as Sasha came closer, wrapped his arms around Nicke and tugged him in until Nicke's crossed arms bumped against Sasha's chest. Sasha was unperturbed, hunching over them so he could press his forehead to Nicke's.

"I'd ruin it," he said. His eyes were a little misty, the way they rarely were when he wasn't drunk. "You know I would, Nicke. I'm drinking and happy and I see you with me...I'd kiss you in front of everyone, and there's always cameras. If pictures come out..."

His voice was low, rhythmic, reasonable. Begging Nicke to understand the way he always had.

Nicke would have ducked his head away if lowering his eyes didn't feel like admitting defeat. He kept his arms up, a barrier between them.

"What? That's seriously your reason, that you'll get drunk and won't be able to keep your hands off me so I just have to be left out of another of the biggest days of your life?"

He could feel when Sasha flinched, and part of him was viciously glad for it. "I never leave you out-"

Nicke stepped back, pulling himself from Sasha's grasp. "Because I remove myself before you can tell me to go. The same song and dance, for years. This once, just this once, I'm asking that you let me be there for you."

_Don't leave me behind again._

_Let me exist._

But Sasha couldn't hear any of the words that Nicke willed at him. He never could; there was no reason for him to start now.

"Maybe when I get back, we talk with my agent," Sasha said.

It was a cop-out. It was such a fucking cop-out that Nicke was momentarily stunned, even though he'd known it was coming.

 _Talk with his agent_. About what? About the state of gay relationships in hockey? About Russian feelings towards LGBT people? They all knew how that conversation would result.

Just another round of going through the motions to confirm that yes, hiding their relationship was the best way to go.

Stuff it down, shove it back in the shadows where it belongs. Something shameful, something hidden away, only allowed to breathe sunlight in the waning hours of dusk.

Fuck, if this was how their future was going to look, they never should have bothered getting married at all.

At the same time as Nicke felt like he'd just had a bucket of ice water dumped on him, a chrysalis cracked open in his chest. The road to freedom had just risen from the depths before his eyes.

He could leave. He could end this whole thing and say fuck it, it was nice while it lasted, and be done with it. No more hiding, no more excuses, no more shaving off the parts of himself that didn't want to play ball, didn't want to conform to being the emotional support animal that Alexander Ovechkin needed.

Nicke could just get up and  _leave_. He almost felt like laughing, or maybe crying, or maybe both at once. Fuck, he could  _leave_. He could do whatever he wanted to do. There were options.

The first was of course that he could continue on the way things had been, but he knew that routine. He'd predicted his whole "conversation" with Sasha from start to finish. Nicke knew what the rest of their life would look like together, starving for the scraps that Sasha could give him when he wasn't busy being Alexander Ovechkin.

The second was that Nicke could leave Sasha and strike out on his own and be whoever the fuck Lars Nicklas Bäckström wanted to be nowadays, and damn how it affected Sasha's career, because it would have nothing to do with Sasha.

Nicke couldn't imagine a life without Sasha, not easily. Sasha had been his whole life for so long; he  _loved_  Sasha, so much. Sasha was sunshine and happiness and warmth and laughter and everything good in Nicke's life.

Sasha was everything good in Nicke's life because Nicke hadn't had a life outside of filling Sasha's needs in eleven years.

He sat down and cried when he realized that. He sat down and cried, and nobody knew because Sasha had already gotten on a plane for Russia, and Nicke knew what he had to do.

Nicke called up a lawyer, and he got his affairs in order. With all the free time on his hands with Sasha out of town, he started packing his things. One of them would be moving, and he knew that it would have to be him. He contacted a realtor, started shopping for apartments. And then he booked a flight to Sweden to visit his family.

Somewhere in there he stopped answering Sasha's messages. It felt inconsiderate and cruel and Nicke really fucking enjoyed letting Sasha know how it felt to be ignored for once.

When Sasha came home, there were divorce papers on the kitchen table, and Nicke was already gone.

He'd never felt so free.

~~~

Nicke's moving day was coming up quickly, and the next afternoon found him in the midst of packing up his things. That was also how the boys found him.

"Papa, Christian says I spend too much time and money on my hair," Andre was whining as he shoved through the door, not even bothering to knock first. Nicke really should have locked it, not that it would have kept the boys out seeing as they were the only other people with keys. "Tell him he's wrong."

Before Nicke had time to process that or even begin to think of a reply, there was a solid  _thud_  as Christian came slamming into Andre's back. Slamming into his back, because Andre had stopped two feet inside the threshold, squinting around the apartment as if he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him and maybe the moving boxes lining the floor were a mirage.

"Papa," Andre said slowly, with Christian straining to see over his shoulder. "Are you doing some spring cleaning?"

They all knew that was clearly untrue, and so Nicke didn't dignify it with a response right away, instead continuing to pack his plastic grocery store dishware into a neatly labeled box. He'd already finished with his books, and the linen closet had been emptied. Honestly, half of his things were still in boxes from his last move, so there wasn't that much to be packed.

Christian had finally edged his way around Andre and was peering at the boxes, mouthing the labels to himself as he skimmed the neat pile nearest the door. "Are you...moving?"

It was his voice that made Nicke take pause.

"Yes," Nicke said slowly, testing the waters. He didn't look up from wrapping his dishes in a perfunctory layer of newspaper. They weren't by any means classy but he still didn't want them to break.

Andre dropped into one of the kitchen chairs with a heavy  _thud_. "But why?"

He sounded so lost.

Nicke grimaced, stopped what he was doing and looked up at him. Christian was still hovering over the boxes, eyes big and serious, and Andre just looked...scared.

Fuck, he wasn't ready for this conversation.

"I...was laid off," he said. "Not too long ago. Nothing I did wrong, but the company is cutting costs by outsourcing. This place was already too expensive, and now I definitely can't afford it, so..."

He shrugged. "I'm moving."

"Where?" Christian's voice was severe, sharper than Nicke had ever heard it before. He looked stern. Actually, he looked like a proper adult for a moment.

"Beltsville. In Maryland. I was able to get a temp job at College Park for the summer, and I found someone willing to rent me a flat for that long. After that..."

Nicke could only shrug again. He hadn't worked out the  _after that_  yet.

Christian started to pace, even though he was hemmed in by the boxes filling the already tight space. "So you're staying local."

"Google says Beltsville is like...half an hour from the arena." Andre had his phone out now. He peeked up at Nicke. "That's not so bad. Did you get a car?"

A smirk crawled across his face as Nicke thought about his "new" car. He nodded.

"Okay, so like, you're not really going anywhere. You're just going somewhere different."

Nicke looked back down at the stack of dishes, started wrapping bowls and adding them to the box. "For now. I'm not sure about after the summer ends, I'll need to get something permanent lined up. The temp job won't pay much, and it's only part-time; I've already picked up a retail job to supplement the pay, just to get as much work as I can. I'm probably going to have to look out of area for something long-term. I've been thinking maybe Connecticut; Hartford has a lot of insurance headquarters there, meaning a lot of jobs similar to what I was already doing-"

He startled when there was a heavy bang from near the door. Christian had clearly just dropped a box, staring up at Nicke in shock; Nicke prayed there wasn't anything valuable in there.

" _Connecticut_?" Christian paced closer, coming to hover over where Nicke and Andre sat at the table. "That's like, what, five hours from here?"

"Six," Andre said miserably. He put his phone down and looked at Nicke with those damned puppy eyes of his. "Papa, you can't move six hours away. How would we come see you?"

Heat bloomed up Nicke's neck, across his cheeks. He bit his lip and ducked his head, focused on packing newspaper into the gaps in the box so that nothing would shift around too much during transport.

"You probably wouldn't," he said slowly.

"That's bullshit!" Christian exploded, at the same time as Andre pleaded, " _Nicke_."

"You can't just leave like that." Christian was running a hand through his hair, messing up the careful job that he'd done gelling it in place; for as much flack as he gave Andre he was just as bad for that. "You can't go. Washington is your  _home_. You need to be here –  _we_  need you here."

Nicke taped up his box, wrote the word  _Dishes_  on the side and capped his marker with a sense of finality.

"D.C. has been my home for a long time. Gävle was my home for a long time too. Things change. Now it's time for me to find someplace new. Figure out what I want to do next. You guys will be fine."

He smirked a little. "I promise you'll be fine. More than you think."

Underneath it all, they were actually capable of being mostly functional adults.

Well. One mostly functional adult, if they worked together.

They'd be fine.

"Besides," he said scooping up his box and setting it onto one of the piles. While he was at it he righted the box that Christian had dropped – books, thankfully. "You'll have all your boys to look after you. Orpik and Carly. Sasha. You'll be fine."

When he turned around, the boys were still staring at him, eyes wide and wounded.

"Nobody can replace you, Nicke," Andre said quietly.

Nicke grimaced and looked away. He still had to get his lamps wrapped up, but those would go last, along with his few pieces of furniture in the truck he'd rented. The hall closet was clear, the linen closet was clear, the cupboards were empty...

"What if we could find you a job?" Christian asked suddenly. Nicke squinted at him; Andre did too.

"What are you talking about?"

Christian started tapping his fingers against his thigh, clearly picking up steam now. "What if Andre and I could find you a job in your field? Like a good one, full-time and benefits and all that. If we found you a job in D.C., would you stay?"

It sounded stupid just to hear it out loud, but Nicke always was in the habit of indulging the boys. "Find me a job where?"

Part of him knew that answer before it was spoken aloud. "Like maybe with the Caps!"

"Oh, fuck off." Nicke didn't try to stop his eye roll. He brushed his hands against his pants and stood up, feeling his back twinge a little. God, he was way too old for this bullshit, and he was only thirty-one.

"That's a good idea!" Andre said at the same time, his face lighting up. He looked more like himself than he had since he first came through the door. "The Caps have like, those behind-the-scenes data people too, like to run their computer systems and stuff. You could do that!"

"And I could also contract genital herpes, but you don't see me running out to do that either, do you."

Living in the same city as Sasha was one thing. Working for his hockey team, even in a corporate capacity where he'd be unlikely to see him, still sounded hellish.

Not to mention how farfetched it was that the Caps would not only have a job available that Nicke was interested in, but also want to hire him of all people.

It was a bad idea from start to finish.

"Don't be like that, Papa." Christian was frowning now, halfway to a pout. Nicke chose to ignore it.

"If you two want to be helpful, I'm moving in two days."

He gave them both a long look. After a momentary standoff, they both huffed and complied.

"Fine," Christian grumbled, picking up a flattened box and starting to fold it together.

Andre poked at a stack of soup cans on the counter. "Hey Papa? What did you mean about getting a retail job? Where are you working?"

Nicke froze.

~~~

It had to be established that Nicke thought there was no shame in having a job in the service industry. If he did, he wouldn't have been so quick to consider it an option for supplemental income. Actually, it was a shame that he could even consider it supplemental when for so many people it was their sole source of income and they had to raise a family on it.

With that being said, Nicke had never, ever pictured himself working at the Home Depot.

In his defense, it was spring hiring season, and they were looking for seasonal employees. Nicke was looking to be a seasonal employee, and he didn't want to work in food service with all of the accompanying grease stains and fryer burns. It had just seemed like a practical fit, especially seeing as his temp job at CP was firm about restricting him to twenty hours a week.

It was just that, at thirty-one years old, Nicke hadn't imagined himself spending his days slinging bags of wet mulch into the back of minivans while impatient soccer moms acted like he was inconveniencing them.

Actually, as Nicke quickly learned, most of the retail experience centered around customers acting like you were inconveniencing them.

"I'd really like this in a lighter shade of brown," a woman said, putting her hand on a metal patio table. "Can you help me with that?"

"It only comes in that color."

She frowned at him. "No, but see I'd buy it if it was in a lighter shade of brown."

"Would you like to purchase a can of spray paint?"

The one good thing about working in a hardware store was that he could get away with saying shit like that and it was considered to be "selling add-ons" and not telling the customer to go fuck themselves.

Nicke spent most of his days dreaming of telling the customers to go fuck themselves.

There was a reason he'd entered a non-customer-facing field by working with computers.

Sasha would have just told him to go ahead and write "Mean Lars" on his apron at this point, and  _fuck_  did he hate the fucking apron, but at least it kept some of the omnipresent grey dust that covered the store in a thick layer off of his clothes. Not to mention the dye running from the wet mulch he was always being forced to cart around.

The boys looked both fascinated and mildly horrified, the first time they got it in their heads that they should come visit Nicke at "his new job."

"This is sort of cool," Andre chirped in Swedish, hopping onto a John Deere tractor. "Do you get to like, ride these things?"

"There's no gas in it," Nicke said. He had his back to them, trying to straighten the shelves of pesticides that constantly looked like a tornado had hit them, even after he'd literally  _just_  spent two hours fixing them.

"But like, you could ride it, right? And just like, drive around the store?"

"It maxes out at like, five miles an hour."

"But you  _could_."

Christian was squinting at some package of grub killer, looking mildly disgusted. "Are those things  _real_?"

"Why don't you go dig up a lawn and check?"

"Nicholas!" a voice called.

Nicke grimaced, while Christian looked like he'd just heard something vulgar. And Christian hadn't even met Nicke's manager yet.

"Nicholas!" Jason was smiling the big, fake smile that he only put on when customers were around or when he was bullshitting to your face. Which was most of the time.

He also seemed entirely unable to pronounce Nicke's name correctly. Perhaps he thought that Nicke said it wrong.

"I'm glad that you're helping to make sure the shelves are front-faced, but we need to face our customers when we speak to them, okay?"

Andre had his elbows propped on the steering wheel of the tractor, squinting at them. Christian looked like he'd just been asked to hold a dead rat.

"Who is this fucker?" he asked in Swedish.

Nicke smiled the tight-lipped, glassy-eyed smile he'd been working on throughout his short retail career and replied, "This is my manager. He thinks I'm too stupid to breathe."

"Well fuck him!" Andre called from the tractor.

"He can go fuck himself," Christian agreed.

Jason's eyes were wide, silently mouthing  _oh_.

"I didn't realize you were helping some of our international customers!" Turning to Christian he clasped his hands in front of him and said loudly, "The Home Depot strives to hire multilingual employees to best serve your needs!"

"Eat my entire ass," Christian said.

Jason looked to Nicke. Nicke smiled flatly.

"He said it's very nice to meet you."

"You liar, I'm reporting you to corporate."

Nicke kept staring at Jason with that frozen smile. "I'm sorry, he'd like to speak to me about insecticides."

"Oh, of course." Jason beamed at them all again using too many teeth. To Christian he said, "Just let me know if you have any questions – or ask Nicholas!"

"You smell like a wharf," Christian told him congenially as Jason finally took his leave. Then he turned to Nicke again.

"Is it like this all the time?"

Nicke shrugged, looking down at the floor. "I don't know. Sometimes it's okay. In the mornings if you stand by the bird seed you can watch all the mice running around."

Christian's nose scrunched in disgust, but Andre was intrigued. "Like,  _how_  early in the morning?"

Nicke's life continued on like that. He went to CP, went to Home Depot, came back to his even tinier box-filled apartment. The Caps made it into the post-season but fell short of repeating last year's success. The boys kept showing up at Nicke's flat and his work whining that they were bored. Eventually, they were both heading back to Sweden for the summer.

"You should come with us," Andre whined, flopped across Nicke's couch. "I don't want you to be here alone. That's...lonely."

Nicke rolled his eyes and continued folding laundry. "You two aren't even going to the same city."

"So? Go visit your parents. Or come see my parents! You know my mom loves you."

He made a face when Nicke reached down and ruffled his hair, even as he leaned into it.

"You really don't understand this whole trying to save money thing, do you? I wouldn't be working two crappy part-time jobs and living in a basement flat that I'm going to be leaving again in a few months if I had the money to spare on a flight to Sweden."

Or he'd just say to hell with it all and move back to Sweden. Which was still a distinct possibility.

Andre grabbed onto his hand as he went to pull it away, staring up at Nicke with those big cow eyes. "You know we'd help you out if you needed it, right?"

The blush was blooming across Nicke's face before he even had a chance to look away. "I don't need charity," he mumbled.

He was doing fine on his own. He'd been keeping a strict budget, and he was actually able to save money right now. This situation wasn't ideal, but it was temporary, and it was functional.

Andre made a sad sound and pulled on Nicke's hand again, holding it to his own chest. "I'm serious. It's not charity to help a friend. Plus...you know Ovi would help you in a heartbeat."

Nicke closed his eyes and sighed, tugging his hand away. "Don't."

"I'm serious." Andre scrambled into an upright position, watching Nicke over the back of the couch. "He misses you. He asks about you all the time. He hasn't stopped texting me since he went back to Russia, asking how you're doing."

It wasn't quite ice that filled Nicke's veins, but it was something cool and unpleasant.

Quietly, he asked, "Do you answer him?"

Andre's face flushed red and he began to stutter. That was all the answer Nicke needed.

"Not all the time!" Andre protested, standing up now. "Only like, a few times, when he gets super sad. Christian said it was okay if-"

"Christian's in on this too? What are you doing, fucking – spying on me for him?"

"No!" Andre came around the couch now, grabbed Nicke by the shoulders. "Papa, no, we're on your side! You know how mad we were when we found out what was going on! We just...he really misses you sometimes. It's sad. He's still our captain. Sometimes we just...give him little updates."

Fuck, Nicke didn't have time for this. He didn't have the time or the energy to even begin to process how he felt about this. About Alex asking after him – about the boys actually  _telling_  him, when Nicke had made it clear that they were no longer a part of each other's lives.

"I need you to go right now," Nicke said quietly. He told himself he didn't care about the flash of hurt on Andre's face, more clear than if he'd written it out in words.

" _Papa-_ "

"Andre, please. Just go."

He couldn't say if he felt vindicated or more miserable when Andre heeded his words with a quiet, "I'm sorry."

The door clicked shut, and Nicke slumped down on his couch. Andre must have already told Christian what happened, because Nicke's phone buzzed with a new text from him.

 _Sorry, Papa_.

Nicke was sure they were sorry, and he was also sure that he'd get over it after a while. He couldn't say he was actually that surprised; he'd just expected something like this to happen a year ago.

Even if the boys were his friends, they had always been Sasha's teammates, first and foremost.

And he knew firsthand how hard it was to deny Sasha anything if he asked. Fuck, he knew all about that.

That was the crux of it in the end: the boys may have been guilty of complying, but there was someone much more easily available for Nicke to blame.

He thumbed open his contacts and scrolled down to "Do Not Engage."

_You've been asking Andre and Christian for information on me?_

It had to be evening in Moscow now, tipping into the time of night when normal people would be asleep. But it was Sasha during the offseason, so naturally he was still awake.

_Nicke! You texting me now?_

_Answer the question._

_(((((( dont be mad at them. Sometimes I ask how you doing._

_So I've heard._  Nicke settled back against the arm of his couch, pulling his knees toward his chest.

After a moment, he added,  _Why do you care?_

Sasha was quick to respond.  _I always care, you know that. I told you, I never stop loving you. I never stop wanting to know you okay._

Nicke grimaced. Now wasn't the time for that.

_You don't have the right to ask that of them. You know they aren't going to say no to their captain._

_I ask because you dont talk to me!_

_That's what being divorced means. It means you don't talk to each other anymore._

_I didnt want a divorce! I always want to talk to you! I LOVE you, Nicke, thats why I marry you!_

It was the same conversation every time they spoke to each other, the same as outside the Caps locker room and when they signed the papers and when Sasha called Nicke after he found the papers. The same, over and over, never breaking new ground, always talking around the problem.

Now was the point where Nicke would remind Sasha of what the real problem was-

_Love wasn't enough anymore. I loved you and you loved me and I was dying in that marriage. I felt like I lost myself._

-and here was where Sasha would change the subject, or just go quiet and never respond at all, only to bring up all the same issues again the next time they spoke to each other, because God forbid he ever actually acknowledge that Nicke had a valid reason for leaving-

_Im so sorry Nicke. I didnt treat you right. I didnt see it till it too late. Ill always love you. But I am sorry. You deserve better._

-and Sasha went off script. Sasha took three right turns and threw the script out the window and, and-

Nicke's phone slipped from his trembling fingers into his lap, but that was fine, because his lungs were tight and his vision was getting blurry and Nicke wouldn't have known what to respond with anyway.

He didn't text Sasha back that night. He didn't text him back the next day, or that week, or at all.

Sasha was still in Russia, and they hadn't seen each other in months, hadn't spoken face-to-face for even longer. But it still felt like something had changed, shifted, something Nicke couldn't quite articulate.

Maybe it was the boiling pot finally pulled from the flames, the lid removed, the steam allowed to escape. The cat was out of the bag, the dirty laundry was being aired.

Alexander the Great, who had never been wrong a day in his life, had apologized. He'd validated Nicke's concerns. He'd accepted that maybe there was a reason why Nicke had to leave, even if he didn't like it.

It was like exhaling for the first time in over a decade. Maybe nothing had tangibly changed: they were certainly still divorced with no plans of changing anything there. Nicke still had one part-time job that was acceptable and one that he barely tolerated, both of which were ending in a few months along with his lease. He and Sasha were still going to live their separate lives in separate worlds, Sasha in his gilded media closet and Nicke searching for the next place to call home.

But maybe, for the first time in a very, very long time, they'd started to clear the air.

And Nicke could breathe again.

~~~

As monumental as the moment had felt, life trekked on. May turned to June turned to July. Nicke's job at CP was wrapping up in a week. His lease was up in less than a month. Home Depot was thankfully, miserably busy, and Nicke got used to smelling like sunscreen and sweat at all hours of the day.

Nicke wasn't in the habit of answering his phone at work, particularly seeing as he could get in trouble for that. But he also hated everything about it, and he liked to willfully do things to spite Jason, and he was already standing around the back of the building searching for a missing pallet of paving stones that a customer just absolutely had to have right now.

So essentially, he really decided to answer the call from an unknown number because he was feeling bitchy and nobody was watching him. He didn't know what he was expecting anyway. Probably a spam call he'd hang up on just as quickly.

He wasn't expecting a woman to say, "Hi, is this Nicklas Bäckström? My name is Monica; I'm with Monumental Sports and Entertainment. We received your resume, and I must say that your qualifications are impressive. We'd like to schedule you for an interview for our data administration position?"

It had to be a joke. It felt like a joke, and yet he knew that it wasn't, because he knew right away what must have happened.

His two little pet shitheads had taken it upon themselves to submit his resume, which they had somehow gotten a copy of, to the Caps. Just exactly what Nicke had said he didn't want to do.

He didn't even know they were hiring. Maybe they hadn't been, if it had taken them this long to call him. And they were calling him, when he didn't even know what the specifics of the position were.

Which he could find out if he went to the interview, but that would mean working for the Capitals – because working for Monumental Sports  _was_  working for the Capitals – and that would mean working a hell of a lot closer to Sasha than he had ever planned on being again, and-

A semi-truck roared by on the way to the receiving dock, throwing off waves of hot air and exhaust and momentarily deafening him. When he could hear again, the woman was saying, "Hello? Mr. Bäckström?"

"Yes," Nicke said. "I'm here."

"Oh, good. I was afraid I'd lost you there. So about that interview?"

Nicke stared up at the unforgiving summer sun in a cloudless blue sky, feeling sweat trickle down his forehead. He swiped his damp hair off of his neck, looking for anything to kill time, delay his response.

"I..."

~~~

Packing up his belongings was becoming a far too familiar activity for Nicke. Knowing that his move to Beltsville would be temporary, he hadn't really bothered to unpack that much in the first place. But it was still such a hassle, pulling out all the boxes again and sorting everything by what he needed right up until the move and what he could box up in advance.

He'd been living his life out of boxes for too long now. He was looking forward to finally finding someplace where he could feel comfortable actually unpacking all of it.

Pulling a box down from the top shelf of his closet as he sorted through it, Nicke thought he might have to reassess that thought.

The box wasn't that big, small enough that he could carry it under one arm.  _Sasha_ , the neat label read.

Nicke hadn't bothered to open it since he'd moved out of their home together. It hadn't been worth it. He knew exactly what was in there: old photographs, Nicke's wedding ring in its familiar velvet box, the gold chain Sasha's parents had given him as a wedding gift. Tickets from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, from various World Championship games, when Sasha had deemed it safe enough for Nicke to come support him. The stuffed bear wearing a Caps shirt that Sasha had given Nicke on their second date, and when Nicke had just stared at it Sasha had laughed and laughed.

They were all things that shouldn't have meant anything anymore, now that they were separated. Now that they were divorced, their marriage null and void.

But they were all memories of the good parts of their relationship, a reminder that it wasn't all bad. Nicke would never have stayed if it was all bad.

Love wasn't enough to keep a relationship together forever, but it wasn't nothing.

Nicke may have felt like he lost his sense of self along the way, maybe his self-respect, but there had never been a moment where he hadn't felt loved.

He added the box to his pile against the wall.

Nicke paused when he heard the knock at his door. He knew who it was; the boys were back from Sweden, and had asked if they could come see him today.

It was just surprising that they would knock.

Then again, it had been surprising that they'd  _asked_.

When he opened the door, both Christian and Andre were there, huddled together with their shoulders hunched and their eyes cast downward, looking like seven year olds freshly chastised by their teacher.

Or young twenty-somethings who were still trying to make amends for reporting on their friend to his ex-husband.

"Sorry Nicke," they mumbled together, still refusing to make eye contact.

Nicke rolled his eyes and examined the ceiling for a moment. He knew what he was going to do; he'd had months to think about it. He just liked to let them stew a little; it was good for building character.

"You're both idiots," he finally said. Maybe it said something for his relationship with them that they both visibly perked up when they heard that.

He rolled his eyes again, just so they could see it properly this time. "Come on, inside. Did you eat lunch yet?"

A moment later the wind was knocked out of him as two fully-grown hockey players slammed into him, sandwiching him between them in a hug.

"Never change, Papa," Andre murmured against his shoulder. Christian hummed his assent on the other side.

They both smelled like they'd doused themselves in Old Spice, and Nicke had actually missed that.

Clearly there was something incredibly wrong with him.

It still felt good to have the boys back again, lounging around in his kitchen chairs again as Nicke unceremoniously dumped packages of cold cuts and a loaf of bread on the table and told them to "figure it out for yourselves."

He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms, trying to hide his smirk as Andre started building a disgustingly large sandwich and Christian spread a thin, precise layer of mustard on his bread.

"Are you moving again soon, Papa?" Andre asked with his mouth full. Nicke kicked the leg of his chair; Andre made a face and swallowed. "Sorry. But like, are you?"

He looked around at the omnipresent boxes.

Nicke shrugged. "The lease is up soon. I haven't quite found a place yet but I've called some people." He nodded towards the folder of printouts he'd been amassing over the summer, realtors' names and apartment complexes, all separated out by town and price.

God, that was another thing he wouldn't miss once he finally got into a permanent place: constantly talking to realtors and researching locations and the general irritation that came with apartment-hunting.

Andre pulled the folder closer. He frowned down at it, leafing through the first few pages. Then he elbowed Christian in the ribs to get his attention and pointed at something.

Both of them turned as one to stare at Nicke. Their mouths were still full, and they looked like nervous chipmunks.

"What?" Nicke groused.

But Christian was already swallowing and shaking his head. "Nothing, nothing. So, uh, how was your summer? Has your boss learned to say your name yet?"

It was a clear change of topic; neither of the boys excelled at subtlety. But Jason had also been a pain in Nicke's ass all summer, and he wouldn't turn down an opportunity to rag on him.

"He keeps trying to show me how to use the store website. He thinks I don't know how to use the internet.  _He showed me how to use Internet Explorer_."

Nicke's chest warmed as he leaned back and listened to their hiccupping laughter. The boys were definitely dumbasses, but they were his dumbasses. It wouldn't be the last time they made a mistake or did something that pissed him off, but fuck it. He'd always take them back again.

That was all part of being a parent, right?

~~~

"For your troubles," the customer said, pressing a crumpled one dollar bill into Nicke's hand.

Nicke had just single-handedly loaded thirty bags of mulch into the guy's minivan while the guy stood back and watched and complained about how hot it was. He looked down at the money in his black-stained hands and then watched as the customer hopped into his van and drove away, the back bumper of the van coming dangerously close to scraping the ground.

He hoped he blew out his suspension.

Nicke wiped his hands on his apron before putting the money in his pocket. It might buy him a cup of coffee at like, a gas station or something. Oh well. Technically he wasn't supposed to take tips at all, but technically Nicke didn't think he could be blamed for what "Nicholas" did.

Usually Nicke liked the six to three shift. For one, it was cooler in the mornings, whereas nine to six forced you to work through the hottest hours of the day. For another, there were fewer customers in the early morning, meaning that Nicke could pick a project and work mostly uninterrupted, whether he was watering plants or sweeping up outside or stocking shelves. It was just him, the mice, and whatever contractors rolled in wearing pre-stained shirts and jeans you could see daylight through.

But fuck, he would never like the assholes that told him that they would be unloading their purchases when they got them home, "so I'm going to just let you load it all in my car for me, haha."

One of these days Nicke might actually lob a piece of wall block at someone's head. Just a little bit. Maybe.

Sasha would be so entertained by how much Mean Lars came out to play here. Apparently retail really did bring out the worst in people.

Nicke made his way back inside, just to have a few moments outside of the oppressive heat. It wasn't that much better indoors, given that air conditioning at the Home Depot was more of a state of mind than a tangible thing, but when you first walked through the doors there was a slight breeze and you could almost pretend it was cool inside.

He was immediately accosted by a woman in a rhinestone-studded purple velour tracksuit who had to be ninety going on nine hundred who had an extremely urgent case of powdery mildew on her tomato plants.

" _Heirloom_  tomatoes," she repeated, as if the plants had been passed down for generations and she didn't just buy a pack of seeds from the checkout at Safeway.

"You would use the same products regardless of the type of tomato," Nicke was trying to explain, when someone gasped loudly over near the entrance.

"Oh my God!" he heard a woman's voice say, followed by murmurs.

The Good Samaritan in Nicke would have had him seeing what the problem was, maybe even going over to help. But the rapidly growing jaded retail employee in him was more than glad to keep his back turned while squinting at a label on a bottle of fungicide, trying to find written proof for the old lady that yes, this fungicide for fruits and vegetables did indeed apply to tomatoes.

"Nicke!"

At this point in his life he probably should have known that any manner of commotion and unrest had to be related to Alexander Ovechkin. It always was, in the end.

When Nicke looked over his shoulder, Sasha was there, coming towards him through a growing crowd of people who were none-too-quietly repeating, "Oh my God, it's Ovi!"

"Ovi, can I get a picture with you?" a woman said, stepping in front of him. Nicke could see Sasha's face grow conflicted.

He snorted and turned back to the product label. Anything for the fans, of course.

So he understandably jumped when a hand landed on his shoulder a moment later, big and warm and familiar.

"Nicke," Sasha panted as if he'd been running a marathon and not just wading through a crowd of fans in a Home Depot. "Nicke, I need to talk to you."

Nicke grimaced pleasantly, his latest customer service expression. "I'm sorry, I'm busy helping another customer right now."

The five hundred year old lady adjusted her glasses – also rhinestone-studded – and peered at Sasha. "Oh my. That's Alexander Ovechkin. Oh, Ovi, you can go ahead of me."

To Nicke, she added, "He's the captain of the Washington Capitals. He won a Stanley Cup, you know."

Only sheer force of will kept Nicke from actually physically face-palming.

"No, ma'am, you were first, it's only fair," Nicke said through gritted teeth.

She narrowed her eyes at Nicke, but brightened when Sasha said, "No, is okay, you can finish first."

"Oh, you're a true gentleman, Ovi," she said. "I promise I don't believe a single thing they say about you Russians."

Sasha's grin turned just the slightest bit stale; Nicke rubbed a hand over his mouth, trying to suppress a smile.

"This product is safe to use on tomato plants, ma'am," he told the customer, pointing to where tomatoes were listed on the label. "And it's organic, so it's safe to use on edible plants."

She squinted down at the label like Nicke might be lying to her.

"That's one I would buy," Sasha said. "I listen to Nicke, he very smart."

The bottle landed in her cart with a decisive  _thud_. "If it's good enough for Alex Ovechkin, it's good enough for me," the customer said. She strolled off to the nursery, undoubtedly to harass someone over how much money she could get discounted on a leaking bag of soil.

Nicke couldn't decide if he wanted to glare at Sasha or thank him.

"What are you doing here?"

Sasha leaned in closer, penning Nicke towards the shelves. "What  _you_  doing here? I try to call, you don't answer, I ask Andre where you live, because is emergency, he says, 'oh, Nicke at Home Depot right now!' I ask why, he say, 'he work there.' I say, 'what you mean, Nicke has a job!' and Andre say, 'oh no, he lose that job months ago.' The fuck is going on, Nicke?"

Nicke leaned back and squinted at him. He hadn't noticed his phone buzzing, but that wasn't so unusual when he was running around at work. And that was all superfluous to the real issues at hand.

"The shitty job market is what's going on," he said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. Part of him felt just a little proud of the boys for not spilling all of his failures to Sasha, at least not until today, evidently. "Why are you here? What's such an emergency that you needed to track me down all of a sudden?"

Sasha grimaced, and just like always, Nicke already had a feeling that he could guess at least part of what had happened.

"The boys say you moving again," Sasha said. He at least had the good grace to look guilty for how he'd acquired the information, but in this case it wasn't so much his fault. Clearly the boys had gone out of their way to contact him and let him know that, because Sasha had no reason to call them up just to ask if Nicke was imminently moving.

"And?"

There was a moment of silence, long and drawn out, as Sasha looked back over his shoulder. They had amassed quite the crowd, people muttering and taking pictures with their phones. It was all of the things that Sasha's agent always warned them about even if they just went to get lunch together at a sandwich shop, made worse because now it was Alex Ovechkin getting weirdly up in the personal space of a retail employee having furtive hushed conversations next to the fungicides.

Nicke knew what would come next here too. Sasha would lose his nerve and slink away with his tail between his legs, or try to get Nicke to leave work early so that they could talk about this whatever-this-was in private, where nobody could record them, because what if somebody got a picture of them together and hacked the Swedish government to match Nicke's picture to his passport photo and found out that Nicke's ex-husband was Alexander Ovechkin?

He was already preparing for it, his bitchiest expression already queued up, when Sasha put his hands on Nicke's shoulders, looked him in the eyes, and said, "I'm going with you."

Nicke blinked. "You're fucking what?"

Sasha nodded to himself as if he'd prepared for this. "Hartford. Connecticut. I'm gonna go with you. The boys told me you gonna move, they said you gonna go there for work, and Nicke, I can't – I can't do this without you anymore. I don't wanna do anything without you. You going to Hartford, I'm going with you. They have hockey there, I'll play for them, and you do computer magic for insurance company, and we be together again."

Reality was rapidly sliding away from Nicke and he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to catch up. He checked over Sasha's shoulder and yes, people were still watching them, and yes, Sasha was still in front of him, insisting that he was going to join the Hartford Wolf Pack.

"The AHL can't afford you," Nicke said. "And you don't want to be affiliated with the Rangers."

Sasha grimaced, but squeezed Nicke's shoulder. "We make sacrifice for marriage, right? That's what you tell me when we divorce. Too many sacrifices. I want to make sacrifice for you. I play for Rangers or for AHL or take discount, or maybe don't play hockey at all – I don't care. Nicke."

His hands slid down Nicke's shoulders to his hands, gripping them tightly in his own. "Nicke, I love you. I don't care where we go or what we do, I love you. I wanna be with you, anywhere. Remember I tell you, marriage more than papers? Marriage more than a lot of things, more than hockey, more than fans. It mean I always pick you, over everything, forever. I didn't do that before."

There were tears in Sasha's eyes now, incomprehensible tears, but this whole thing was incomprehensible.

"Sasha," Nicke hissed. He tried to tug his hands back, but Sasha was holding firm. "Sasha, people are watching. They have cameras out."

Sasha smiled then, even through the tears, and he squeezed Nicke's hands. "I know," he said. "I know. I thought about it. I'm..."

He squeezed Nicke's hands again. "It's gonna be okay, Nicke. This more important.  _You_  more important. I want this."

And then he slid down to one knee, still holding Nicke's hands tightly in his own.

"Get off the fucking floor," Nicke hissed, "Concrete is bad for your knees and there are so many fucking mice here."

"I don't care about mice. I don't care about cameras or people or hockey. I care about you. I wanna be with you. And I wanna do right this time, and that mean putting you first, always. Nicke, I love you. And I'm gonna show you every day that I can change and be better, 'cause I wanna marry you again, but I wanna do it right."

He let go of Nicke's hands then, reached up and pulled a long gold chain over his head. His wedding ring hung from it, swinging unassumingly as Sasha fought with the clasp.

"I still never take it off," he said as he unhooked it. He cupped his hand under the ring, drawing the chain through it until the ring was free and then tucking the chain in his pocket. "I never take it off, but now..."

Sasha pressed the ring into Nicke's limp hand, curled Nicke's fingers around it. "You keep for me, and you give back when I earn it, okay? I'm gonna earn it, I promise. But I gotta be better first. So I'm gonna go with you, anywhere you wanna go, Nicke."

Then, almost as an afterthought, "Well. If you say is okay."

Nicke snorted at that, loud and obnoxious and entirely unattractive. You could hear a pin drop in the dead silence of the pesticide and herbicide aisle, the faint strains of an in-store advertisement for toilets playing in the background, and there was Nicke, trying to keep from laughing out loud at his ex-husband's pseudo-proposal.

But even as their audience started to grumble unhappily, Sasha was smiling and squeezing Nicke's hand again. "Don't you laugh at me Lars, I work hard for that."

"You plan it the whole ride over here?"

"All thirty minutes!" Sasha agreed, and Nicke knew Sasha was clearly playing it up for his own sake, but fuck, it made him laugh.

There was a reason Lars Nicklas Bäckström had let Alexander Mikhailovich Ovechkin pick him up in a bar in Arlington: Sasha always had been able to make Nicke laugh.

"You mean it." Nicke squeezed the ring against his palm, the metal smooth and warm and familiar. "You'd really give all that up, for me. You're going public, for me."

"Nicke," Sasha said seriously, "I will put out gay porn tape if you want. Tasteful porn, but-"

Nicke couldn't let those words come into existence, not when there were currently children gawking at them already, and so he ducked down and pressed his lips to Sasha's.

It was chaste and short, barely more than a peck, but he could hear the crowd start to freak out. Nicke moved to pull away, but Sasha cradled his head in one hand and held him in place for just a few seconds longer.

When he finally did let Nicke pull back, Sasha just petted a hand over his hair, smiling up at him like an idiot.

"I love you, Nicke," he whispered against Nicke's lips. "I'm gonna prove it every day, forever."

"This angle is killing my back," Nicke whispered back. "And I'm not moving to Connecticut."

Sasha frowned and reared back. "No?"

Nicke smiled and shook his head. "The little shits got me hired with Monumental Sports. I just didn't tell them yet because I wanted to watch them squirm."

"Mean Lars!" Sasha gasped dramatically. But his eyes were...Nicke had to swallow pretty hard after staring into his eyes. "So you gonna stay? And work for the Caps?"

It all seemed so far-fetched – but fuck it, this right here was far-fetched, Nicke's whole  _life_  was far-fetched. "Yeah." He shrugged a little helplessly. "Yeah, I am. And...I don't actually have a place to live yet, and my lease is almost up."

Sasha squinted up at him. "Nicklas Bäckström with no plan?"

"What can I say, New Nicke is a rebel."

He tugged on Sasha's hand that was still in his grasp, the ring pressed between them, and Sasha stood with a grunt. Bringing their joined hands together, he pressed a kiss to Nicke's knuckles.

"I like New Nicke. I like Old Nicke too. I even like Mean Lars."

"Go fuck yourself," Nicke whispered tenderly.

Sasha beamed. "Only if you help, babes."

"Nicholas!" a voice shouted. Nicke closed his eyes and groaned, leaning his forehead against Sasha's shoulder.

"Nicholas, what's this I hear about you causing a scene with – Alex Ovechkin?"

Even with his eyes closed Nicke could practically hear Jason scurry over, as much as a man his height could scurry. "I am so sorry, Mr. Ovechkin, Nicholas doesn't always have the best customer service boundaries," he said, trying to put a hand on Nicke's shoulder and pry them apart.

Whispering loudly he added, "It's because he's international."

When Nicke looked at him, Sasha was wearing the frown which meant he was playing the words he heard back to himself trying to make sure he'd actually heard what he thought he'd just heard.

But he didn't need to understand what Jason had just said, and neither did Nicke, for that matter. He'd already given his notice once he'd gotten a start date with Monumental, anyway.

"Jason," Nicke said very carefully, "Please feel welcome to eat my entire ass."

If Nicke's snort had been unattractive, Sasha's was downright disgusting.

Somebody in the crowd made an offended noise. A mouse ran out from under a pallet of Triazicide and made a break for the bird seed. Nicke was still holding Sasha's hand, the ring a warm weight between them.

The pictures of Sasha getting on one knee in front of Nicke would be the ones to take over the internet and appear on the front page of every newspaper the next morning, but the pictures of that moment right there were the ones that Nicke had framed when he moved back in.

~~~

It was the last game of the regular season. The Caps were playing the Rangers, and Nicke took great joy in whipping out his Lundqvist jersey.

He wasn't seated in the lower bowl this time – he'd actually settled in pretty well up in the family suite, where he didn't have to worry about being hit with flying pucks nearly as much. But he still made his way down to the glass for warm-ups.

As always, Nicke could tell the exact moment that the boys noticed him there – and particularly noticed his jersey. Mostly because they started firing pucks in his direction, much to the excitement of the kids crowded around the glass.

He could see Sasha on the other side of the ice, scanning the faces along the glass. As soon as he spotted Nicke he made a beeline over, jumping up into the glass when he reached it. The kids shrieked in delight; Nicke just reached into his pocket and pulled something out.

Without waiting for Sasha to get a proper look at what he was doing, Nicke lobbed the object over the glass.

It was warm-ups, so thankfully none of the arena staff noticed right away that he was committing a cardinal sin by tossing something over the glass. But people certainly did notice when a puck came down and bounced off of Alex Ovechkin's helmet with a solid  _thwack_.

Sasha reared back and scowled at Nicke in confusion; Nick just raised his eyebrows and smiled, pointing down at the ice.

He watched as Sasha bent and scooped up the puck, nearly bouncing in place as Sasha read the words with some consternation.

And then Sasha realized exactly what puck this was and who had written those words and he threw back his head and laughed, loud enough that Nicke could hear it through the glass.

But Nicke wasn't done. He pointed at the puck again. Sasha narrowed his eyes playfully at him and examined the puck again.

Nicke was watching with baited breath as Sasha flipped the puck over and found the ring taped to the other side – the ring that Nicke had been carrying around along with his own for the past eight months.

When Sasha looked back at him with wide blue eyes, Nicke held up his own left hand to show off the ring there and propped a sign up on the boards.

_Hey Ovi #8, marry me?_

Sasha's teammates would later tell them that they were a horrible embarrassment, seeing how Sasha nearly started crying right there on the ice, tripping over himself to say yes.

Nicke always said that at the very least, he didn't invite Sasha to put it in his five-hole.

Or to eat his entire ass.

Sasha ended up doing both of those things later that night, but that was beside the point.

The real point was that when the Caps won the Stanley Cup for a second time and everyone's families came out onto the ice to congratulate them, the first thing Sasha did was skate over to Nicke and get down on one knee to present him the Stanley Cup.

And Nicke?

Nicke was wearing a Washington Capitals jersey.

Granted, it was a Holtby jersey, but no relationship is perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [swedishgoaliemafia on Tumblr](https://swedishgoaliemafia.tumblr.com/).


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